


Come Here, Don't Fight with Me

by Vacantcing



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post Season 7, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-02-28 06:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13265265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vacantcing/pseuds/Vacantcing
Summary: She wants, but she cannot have. She craves, but she does not permit. She loves, but she does not say. Jon and Daenerys arrive at Winterfell. Sansa has no time for traitors.





	1. Sweetheart, What Have You Done?

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Keaton Henson's song "Sweetheart, What Have You Done to Us?"

She wants, but she cannot have.

She craves, but she does not permit.

She loves, but she does not say.

These days Sansa rarely speaks to Jon, save a curt reply or the claiming of an unnecessary last word of a sentence.

She watches him and the Dragon Queen walk the halls of her ancestral home and her skin burns hot. How could he give the North away, how could he just give it away as if it were some piece of cloth?

The direwolf sigil may mean little to him, but it meant everything to her.

So she carries out her duties as the Lady of Winterfell in an angry silence. Tends to the steady stream of frightened men, women and children coming through the gates with each passing day. She monitors the stores and the grains, making sure her people have full stomachs and warm beds or anything that resembles those things as much as possible. She oversees the armoury, the kitchens and the stables with Brienne a steady figure by her side. She is everywhere at once, and she is made sure to be seen.

A lady she was, and Sansa doubts the Dragon Queen has overseen anything personally in her life with the way she held herself. She was proud and unsure Sansa could tell, a permanent crease between her dark brows.

 _Good_ Sansa thinks. She should not feel comfortable here.

In her solar she sows new clothes for Bran and Arya, her fingers working until they are rubbed red and raw. She tears at the cloth, feeling as if it was her forlorn heart.

Sansa feels pushed aside as if she were the rag dolls she often played with when she was a babe. She was the Lady of Winterfell and the eldest daughter of Eddard Stark, and _this was her home_. How dare Jon bring this foreign queen through the very gates they both had worked so hard to reclaim? What right did Daenerys Targaryen have to walk amongst the Godswood of the Starks her own father had burnt alive? What is to say she won’t do the same when Jon can no longer placate her? Cold fingers work harder at the thread.

A deafening screech sounds above Winterfell and Sansa starts, missing a stitch. She sighs, and wishes Lady was by her side.

Although her family is back with her, Sansa still feels alone. Bran is changed, and Sansa fears it is permanent. Arya has too, disappearing into the night without a word and reappearing just as quietly with the copper tang of blood faint on her skin. It scares her, but Sansa will never say it out loud.

And now Jon, he has changed as well. Sansa clenches her fists. She had begged him not to go South, no good had ever come to Northerners who ventured South and she had been right, as her forefathers had been before her. He had bent the knee and given up Winterfell, without so much as a raven of warning or the ask of counsel.

_We need to trust each other._

She remembers how she and Jon had stood on the ramparts, looking out towards the vast white plane of the North. It had begun to snow; Sansa had tasted it on her lips. Then Jon’s lips were on her temple, her chin cupped in his warm hands.

_We have so many enemies now._

_Yes, and now you have brought one into our home._

Sansa was hurt, and of all the betrayals she has experienced, this one dug the deepest. She hits another snag in the embroidery. Very nearly growling she was about to throw down the cloth altogether when there is a knock at her door.

“My lady, your brother is here to see you.”

Sansa pauses at Brienne’s words, and considers ignoring them altogether. This was not the first time Jon had attempted to speak to her alone since he had returned, and it was not the first time Sansa had turned him away.

He tries to speak to her after council meetings, at the dining hall and looks for her during the days but Sansa keeps herself busy, too busy to speak to traitors.

Now Jon has taken to seeking her out when he knows she will be in one place and one place only. She had been childish, the first of his attempts to see her. When she would hear footsteps approaching Sansa would blow out her candles and wait for the sigh and the footsteps to leave. This time Jon had come earlier, and sleep was no longer a believable excuse.

“I’m sorry my lord but–”

“Sansa, _please_.” Jon’s voice interrupts Brienne’s and Sansa picks up the frustration in his tone.

She stays quiet.

“Sansa, I am still Lord of Winterfell. I order you to open this door or I will take it down myself.”

She contemplates for a moment, and she believes Jon when he says he will do it. Sansa gets up and opens the door, if only to save him from Brienne’s sword.

Jon looks up at her, opens his mouth and for a moment he looks like he doesn’t know what to say.

 _“Your grace.”_ Her voice is granite.

He’s angry at that, and pushes past her into the room. Sansa gives Brienne a curt nod as the door slams shut behind him.

“How long are you going to keep this going?”

“Keep what going?”

“Ignoring me. Punishing me.”

“You think I’m punishing you?”

He gives an exasperated sigh and Sansa lets herself feel the smallest bit of satisfaction.

“Sansa, I’m sorry. But I bent the knee to Daenerys because we need her dragons. There is no way to defeat the Night King without them.”

“I hear her dragons aren’t the only things you need from her.” It’s foolish, to bring it up she knows. But it comes out of her mouth before Sansa realizes.

She watches as Jon stiffens and something drops in her chest to now know that the rumours were true. But Sansa should understand she supposes, Daenerys was a beautiful woman. She was queen and Jon was a king. Well, he _was_ a king. It would have been quite inevitable for them to end up together one way or another.

“I needed to be sure she would help us.” He eventually exhales out. It comes out slow, almost painful.

“Yes, I supposed she needed some convincing.”

_A woman’s best weapon is between her legs._

“Sansa, you don’t understand–” She shakes her head.

“I understand everything Jon. And I only ask you of this, when the war is over and you leave with her, don’t make me remarry. I will surely die before I am forced to give myself to another man again.”

At her words Jon looks as if he’s been struck.

“Sansa, I will never let another man touch you without your permission again. And I will never leave with Daenerys.”

She feels relief at his words, but it’s the second part of his sentence that catches her attention.

“Are you not going to marry her?” Lord Baelish’s words echo in the back of her mind.

“What? Why would I do that?”

“You’ve bedded her. You are both young and unmarried.”

At least he has the decency to go red at her words.

“Was the whole point not to make an alliance with her?”

“Alliances can be made in other ways,” he mumbles.

“Well it isn’t as if you are waiting for someone else.” Jon makes a queer noise at that and turns to face her.

“Sansa, I will never leave Winterfell again. It is my home. And yours. And Arya’s and Bran’s. Winterfell is ours.”

“So you intend for us to stay here, together?”

“Of course I do!” Jon takes a step forward and they are so close, their noses nearly touching.

She can see the flecks of grey in his eyes.

“Everything I do is for the North. For our family. For you.” If this were any other moment Sansa would have shed a tear. But lately she has found she is all out of them.

Her next words come out shaking.

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

She doesn’t resist as Jon grabs her hands in his, pulling them to his chest.

“Sansa, please believe me. I have not blindly given Daenerys the North.” He looks so honest, and she’s breathing deep.

Sansa suddenly can’t think of anything but the warmth of Jon’s hands around her own. She doesn’t realize she’s leaned forward when her forehead meets his.

“I’m scared, Jon.”

“Aye, I am as well. But we’ll face it together. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll protect you, I promise.”

The same words Jon had said to her in the tent the night before the Battle of the Bastards. She had believed him then, and she believes him now.

Sansa is tired of being angry. Alone in Jon’s presence, she finds her shoulders relaxing, her breathing quietening. She is tired of being lonely.

She hadn’t meant to do it, but the next thing she feels is the softness of Jon’s lips and the scratch of his beard against her chin. It only lasts a few seconds, but it’s a moment Sansa will remember for a lifetime.

It’s a quiet, fleeting collision of a thing and Sansa starts to pull away at the shame and folly of it. _You stupid girl why did you do that? Oh gods, what would mother and father think? This is wrong this is unnatural this is –_

The thoughts pause as soon as she feels Jon’s hands in her hair.

 _… what you’ve wanted_.

They both pull away at the same time, wide eyed and opened mouthed.

“Jon I–” Her cheeks are burning and she stumbles backwards, retreating to the side of her bed and hating wanting the feel of his mouth back against hers.

He’s following her backward, a look she has never seen before on his face. It’s confusion, it’s wanting, it’s horror it’s – _just right_.

He’s about to grab hold of her wrist when a knock sounds. “My lady? My lord?”

Sansa doesn’t know if she’s relieved or furious at Brienne who seemed as if she could sense her distress even through a wooden door.

Was Sansa distressed? She didn’t know. Her heart feels as if it would come out of her chest at any moment.

“Forgive me.” Jon utters the words in her direction and opens the door, rushing past a confused Brienne on the way out.

Her sworn shield’s eyes are large and concerned as she takes in her lady's face, leaning against the bedpost. Sansa lets her tears fall then, unable to hold them in.

_Sweetheart, what have you done to us?_


	2. Turned to Dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kind comments. It's because of them I have decided to expand this story. Let me know what you think.

Jon sits in the great hall, a less than pleased expression on his face. With his plate half eaten and the headache blooming at the back of his skull, he wishes he were anywhere but this room. But he was Lord of Winterfell, and all of his guests were seated.

He sighs, he was never cut out for this part of ruling. They were not currently planning their next battle strategy. They were not preparing for a diplomatic negotiation. There was no talk of the armouries or the stables or the supplies. Tyrion Lannister as well as Ser Davos had advised him to retire his talk of the war for the night. To get some rest and breathe before facing the inevitable that was to come on the morrow.

So Jon had reluctantly sat back, openly unhappy and drank cup of ale after cup of ale, watching the odd gathering of Northmen, Southerners, Unsullied and Dorthraki around him.

Near him Arya stabbed at her meal, eyeing the faces around her, only pausing briefly to flash a poorly concealed smile in the blacksmith Gendry’s way. Bran had retired early to his chambers, where he spent a lot of his time lately. A group of Dothraki bellowed out laughter with an uncomfortable Varys. Daenerys whispered and smiled with her advisor Missandei.

Jon felt lost in the noise. Socialising and eating and drinking seemed to be unfit activities for such dire times. But even so he was not a lord who knew how to deal with this. Sansa was the one who could do these types of things. She would have known what to do in these situations.

 _Sansa_. Jon shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Images flash and he sees moving lips and grabbing hands.

He finishes his drink in one go.

“My lord, is Lady Sansa not joining us again this evening?”

And while Jon should have expected that question sooner or later as there was an unanswered gap to the left of him, hearing her name makes him sit up a little straighter. It was as if she would appear through the doors at that very moment.

Jon turns from bottom of his empty cup to see a questioning Tyrion Lannister across the table.

“I hear she’s taken ill recently. Lady Brienne mentioned so when I stopped by her chambers earlier today.”

The pain at the back of Jon’s head intensified.  

Somewhere far away to Jon’s ears he hears Ser Davos’ voice.

“Yes, excuse Lady Sansa. She has been feeling unwell as of late and has taken to bed.”

“Is it serious?” Daenerys’ sweet voice chimes in from his right.

_I wouldn’t know, I haven’t spoken to her in days._

“No, nothing to worry about,” he says.

He resists the urge to move his hand away when Daenerys’s small fingers curl around his own.  

 

* * *

 

He will apologise. He will tell her that it had been a lapse of judgement. That it had been wrong. Of course it had been wrong.

Then why couldn’t he forget the feel of her lips, how they curved so naturally to fit to his own? Why couldn’t he erase the image of Sansa’s eyes, half lidded and looking at him like she had?

Jon swallows and starts walking.

It’s the middle of the night and he finds himself in front of her door. Brienne is there, her face undecided on what she feels when she sees him approaching. Jon is tired, his expression no doubt matching hers.

“Is she awake?”

“Yes my lord. But I’m not sure if it is a good time for you to see her. She has been very upset… ever since your visit.”

Jon seizes up at that, and he hates himself a little bit more.

His next words come out quiet.

“She is my sister and I will see her.”

Brienne nods and steps aside.

Jon takes a deep breath, and enters.

 

* * *

 

“Sansa.”

She has her back turned to him, needlework on her lap and facing the hearth.

He pauses for a moment, unsure of how to start.

He feels the immediate tension in the room, and it was stifling. There was a barrier between them now, one even the Wall couldn’t compare to, and for the life of him Jon isn’t sure if he can get through. He tries to start simply, struggling to form the right words.

“You haven’t left your room. Are you unwell?”

The room is quiet, the only other sound other than his breathing belonging to the fire burning. It hisses and spits, the flames illuminating her red hair. Jon stands by the door, balling his hands into fists to stop from reaching out to her.

For a moment he wonders if she has returned to ignoring him, and a part of him thinks that it may actually be better for them, but she speaks.

“I think my head is.”

It’s guilt, that roils in his stomach. He can’t stand it, the unhappiness that he feels from her. He has failed her; father’s ghost would surely bring hell upon him now.

It was his fault, he didn’t stop it as soon as it had started. He had let it happen, and it was up to him to put an end to it. Sansa has been through enough, she doesn’t need him. She shouldn’t _want_ him.

_Gods but you want her._

He seizes up every ounce of courage he has left and forces himself to speak with a tight throat.

“What happened... was a mistake. It was late. We were tired and angry and not thinking. I’m sorry,”

“We’ll forget it ever happened. Nothing needs to change.”

He says it all slowly, testing the weight of the words in his mouth. He ignores the bitter taste of the lie and swallows it whole.

He has said the things he had rehearsed a hundred times over in his mind and had thought she would have wanted to hear. But instead she just looks more ill than before.

 

* * *

 

_Was that what she was, a mistake to him?_

Sansa twists at her needlework, her palms sweating.

“If that is how you feel.”

She gives a humourless smile to herself. It hadn’t of felt that way when his hands had been in her hair.

“We’re siblings,” he tries.

“Half siblings.”

“Sansa we’d be no better than the Lannisters!”

“Or the Targaryens I suppose. A toss of a coin, was it?”

She hears a heavy sigh from Jon as he takes a seat opposite her.

“We’re in the middle of a war…”

She can see he’s trying to rationalise, to deflect. She won’t let him. She won’t let him take away the one thing that makes her feel anything these days.

“Were we not in the middle of a war when you were sailing back from White Harbour?” Sansa accuses.

He gives her a dark look at that.

“That was different.”

She wants to scream at him to get out. Maybe if he doesn’t say anything more all of this would hurt less. For days she thought she was going out of her mind. She had kissed Jon. _Jon._ And he had kissed her back!

And then he had ignored her. Each passing hour her stomach had twisted and tied itself into knots wondering what he would say when he would see her the next morning. But after a sleepless night all she was greeted with was Brienne’s concerned face. She had asked for Jon and had been informed he was busy.

It had felt like someone had knocked all the air out of Sansa’s lungs. It was simple, Jon didn’t want to see her.

Every time Sansa thinks she’s gotten it, a little piece of life that was _hers_ it was always taken away.  Joffrey had shattered her first illusion. Cersei, the beautiful queen she admired had turned out to have the ugliest heart of them all. An opportunity to be a Tyrell was taken away from her by the Lannisters. She was given to Tyrion Lannister then Ramsey Bolton then Petyr Baelish. Beaten and battered and bruised she had taken it. Without a voice, she had endured.

But now she has found her voice. She was a daughter of the North. She should have strength within these walls, her life should now be hers to dictate.

But it seemed the gods weren’t done with her. They have cursed her to want her sibling. And now they were taking him away too.

“How was that different Jon? Just admit it, you lied and you want her! She’s beautiful and a queen and has dragons and an army.” 

She doesn’t notice her voice has escalated into a near shout. She doesn’t care. She hates him. She hates everything that he could have been to her.

“Gods Sansa how many times do I need to tell you, I don’t want her!”

“And it was different because I care about you, Sansa! _More_ than I do her. I’m not kept awake in the night because of her. I don’t feel like my bloody chest is collapsing or that I’m losing my damn mind when there are other very important things to see to, but instead I’m pacing in my room thinking about a kiss that lasted five fucking seconds with my _sister_!”

She’s stunned into silence at his outburst.

He looks to the ground, ashamed and his jaw working.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled.”

Sansa feels like every muscle in her body has frozen into place. His words played over and over in her ears. She’s torn between wanting to slap him and going to him right there, to pick up this wounded shell of a man and mend him back together.

She wishes they could just hide away from the world, to take their family and just run and let the stupid wheel crush on itself. But she doesn’t move, she doesn’t say anything because _Jon loved her too._

He may not have said it directly, but she knew.

She also knew that he doesn’t want to be with her and it hurt.

She waits as he continues.

“But even if I feel this way, we can’t. The bannermen would revolt. The other lords and ladies would shun us. I would lose Daenerys’ confidence _and_ the war. Arya and Bran, gods what would they think?”

Sansa is sure of all the things their siblings have claimed to see, a relationship between herself and Jon would be the least worrisome. But she can't argue, she knows.

Sansa knows how to play the game and as much as she doesn’t want to acknowledge it, this would not be a wise way to play. They would lose and it would all be because of her selfish heart. Jon was speaking with a levelled head, and she loathed him for it.

When she doesn’t say anything, he takes her silence as an agreement.

“It will be better for us this way, I promise.”

Of all things, Sansa would have never thought that Jon would have to promise to protect her from herself. Was she a fool to ever entertain the thought of them being together?

_Just a stupid girl who never learns._

Maybe it was time for her to admit, Sansa will never have her shining prince. Instead she will see him go to a queen, and if not a queen, all that mattered is that it would not be her.

It was never her, in the end.


	3. Not My Keeper

Sansa is not one to wallow in her misery. Her younger self may have, but she was now a woman grown. There were more important matters to attend to than an unrequited love.

She throws herself into her duties with renewed vigor, determined to fill her days and to keep her hands busy. She’s afraid if she’s left idle for too long they will reach for _someone_ rather than something.

If Arya notices the increased distance between her siblings, she doesn’t ask questions. Nor does Sansa thinks she should.

Her and Jon have gone back to essentially ignoring each other, but if that was the cost of keeping the North, Sansa will play her role.

So she keeps her face neutral when she sees Jon and Daenerys share small hushed conversations in the dining hall. Swallows her food when the Dragon Queen’s hands land on Jon’s arms, the familiarity of it leaving her feeling slightly winded. But she keeps her smile in place, even if it feels like it was splitting her in two. 

_I am the blood of a direwolf, and we do not heel, not even to dragons._

* * *

 

She’s with Bran out in the Godswood, her on the bench and him in his chair.

She remembers this was where father used to sit with Ice, repairing it until the blade sang with every stroke of the whetstone.

They don’t speak, but Sansa is content with the silence.

Bran is expressionless as usual, but Sansa feels she is getting used to it, little by little.

They had been sitting in the quiet for so long she startles when she hears her brother’s voice.

“Something is missing,” he announces.   

She looks up from her book, a question on her lips. She wonders if he is he cold or if he needs something.

“It’s important. I can’t see it yet.”

Sansa sighs. She doesn’t think she will ever understand her younger brother’s so-called visions or why he has them, no matter how he tries to explain with his cryptic sentences.

“This missing thing, is it important to the war?” It seems all anyone talked about was the war now, or the Great War as many were calling it.  

“Yes, it is.”

The uncomfortable feeling rises again, as it did whenever Bran spoke in unclear ways.

“It involves Jon.”

Sansa feels her breath hitch but keeps her expression calm.

“Is something going to happen to him?”

“It has already happened.”

Sansa wants to groan in frustration. It was no use to question him further, Sansa has learnt Bran will not answer a lot of things. Unsure of what to do with his statement, she turns back to her book.

More moments pass before he speaks again.

“You and him are not speaking.” He says it not as an observation, but as a fact.

Sansa licks her cold fingers and turns a page.

“What of it?”

“It upsets you.”

Sansa wonders if this was Bran’s way of giving her relationship advice. In a way she’s glad he knows without being told, but also she was the elder sister it was her role to counsel _him_.

“Anyone would be upset if he gave up the North without consulting them. You and Arya should be upset too.”

“Jon is Lord of Winterfell, he did what he thought was best,”

“But that is not the issue here, truly.”

For a long time, she’s quiet. She supposes there is no use in hiding it from Bran. After all, who would he tell?

Sansa doesn’t look at him when she replies.

“What would you have me do? Not speaking to him is hard. Speaking to him is harder.”

Bran seems to consider this for a moment.

“Give it time. Time will reveal everything.”          

“I don’t suppose you can use your third eye and tell me what will happen between us?” Sansa half jokes.

Bran gives a small smile, the first real one Sansa has seen since he has arrived home.

“It doesn’t work that way.”

 

* * *

 

Sansa is out on the ramparts when she sees a rider approaching in the distance.

She watches as the small figure comes closer and closer. The rider is not baring any sigil or recognizable armor, but as they near the threshold of Winterfell’s gate, she sees a gold flash.

Brienne stiffens next to her and Sansa gives her sworn shield a look.

Jaime Lannister was at their gates.

“Who goes there?” A guard’s voice echoes. Dozens of arrows are immediately drawn, pointing towards the lone rider.

“Jaime Lannister. I come to speak to Jon Snow. We had an agreement.”

“You ride alone?”

Sansa can almost hear his defeated sigh from up here. Jaime gestures to the empty space around him.

“Yes.”

Sansa turns to Brienne.

“I thought Cersei had agreed to send an army to help us?”

The larger woman’s face is puzzled.

“She did.”

 

* * *

 

They all gather in the great hall.

Sansa takes her place to Jon’s left, and Daenerys in her makeshift throne at his right.

There is an eerie silence as they all wait for the Kingslayer to speak.

“Why have you come alone?” Jon demands.

“Cersei has gone mad. She won’t send an army and will wait it out until whatever the outcome is here. I tried to reason with her, to tell her that it won’t end well with any of her remaining options. But she won’t listen. She won’t listen to anyone anymore.”

There’s a hint of sadness in his last words and Sansa finds herself feeling pity for him, despite it all.

She remembers the gallant golden knight that had ridden through the same gates several years prior. Now here he was, without gold without glory and without a hand.

_How the mighty fall._

She spares a look at Jon. He rubs at his temples furiously. She can tell he is trying to keep it together.

“We need to hasten the production of dragon glass weapons. We need to find every able-bodied person in the North and to start training them immediately.”

He turns to Maester Wolkan.

“Send ravens out again to every house that will listen. Tell them this is life or death and the Warden of the North commands them to answer.”

The old man bows and hurries away.

He turns back to Jaime.

“So Kingslayer, if you do not bring an army why are you here?”

“I’m here to offer my services.” It’s an honest reply.

Jon is incredulous.

“Did you really think I would believe that you, the queen’s commander and her twin would just abandon her? That you would willingly come to the North and ‘offer up your services’ and not be some sort of informant?”

Jaime looks as if he wants to protest, but Jon carries on before he can have his say.

“And say if you did choose to abandon her, do you really think I would let you into my home? The home where you tried to murder my brother?”

For the first time in her life Sansa sees Jaime Lannister look ashamed.

“For that I cannot apologise enough. But you must believe me when I say I am here on my own accord, with good intentions,”

He ignores what he thinks is a laugh from the crowd and continues.

“I can help, I am a seasoned army commander. I may not be able to fight as well as I once did, but I can be of use, that I can assure you.”

“I’ve heard of your promises Jaime Lannister. And I do not think they are of any worth.”

Heads turn to an angry Daenerys Targaryen.

“Aerys’ daughter.” The words come out of Jaime in a quiet exhale.

“You will address her as Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the first of her name. The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khalessi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons.”

Missandei recites this title with pride, as reflected by the faces of Daenerys’ party. Tyrion and Varys shift on their feet.

Jaime takes a deep breath.

“While that is an impressive title my lady, it is not you who I seek to serve.”

The Dragon Queen looks as if she wants to say something else, but Jaime to everyone’s surprise, turns to Sansa.

“My lady. I made a promise to your mother that I would return you and your sister to Winterfell. I charged Lady Brienne with that task and I see she has fulfilled her duty. I stand before you now humbled and ask that you take me into your service. If you may have me, I pledge my sword to you, to this day to the end of my days.”

A stunned hush falls on the crowd.

Sansa is caught off guard. She looks to Brienne for guidance. She may have never had much to do with Jaime Lannister, but he was never unkind to her. However, she knows that cannot be said for others.

But Sansa has heard things from her sworn shield, a woman in which she holds in high regard.

She has heard how Jaime saved Brienne that night that resulted in his hand being cut off. She has listened to the small stories Brienne would speak of, how he had discussed with her back in Kings Landing on how to keep her safe. Marvelled at him giving Brienne Oathkeeper and charging her to find her and Arya. Surprised when she heard how he had let her go in Riverrun.

Sansa has listened to the tales that pointed to Jaime Lannister being a changed man, and at the end of it, she thinks she believes them.

Sansa stands.

She ignores the terse looks from Jon and Arya. She ignores the anger radiating from Daenerys Targaryen. She ignores the hope in Tyrion’s eyes.

She does spare a glance at Bran who just sits, and watches. Even from the distance, she sees him give the slightest nod.

“I accept your offer, Jaime Lannister.”                    

The room erupts into protest.

“Sansa–”

She turns to Jon, and with a voice so low that only he could hear, she tells him,

“This is my decision, and my decision is final.”

  

* * *

  

He follows her out of the meeting, hurrying after her wide steps.

“Sansa, wait.”

He takes hold of her arm before she shakes it away.

“What do you want?”

“Jaime Lannister?” There is disbelief in his voice.

“He offered his services to me, and I accepted.” She takes the time to say it as if she were explaining to a small child.

“Why would you do that?”

“You know what he’s done, what he’s known for. He’s not exactly the most loyal person to have in your charge,” he says.

“It seems that people’s loyalties can change,” she fires back.

“And what would you know, you haven’t seen him in years. Brienne _has_. She can vouch for him. He’s not the same as he was all those years ago, just like you are not the green boy that arrived at Castle Black on that first day.”

Jon looks at her as if she’s gone mad. Maybe she has.

“I don’t believe it. He’s a liar and a Kingslayer, you won’t be safe with him.”

“Why does it bother you so much? Leave me be, you are not my keeper Jon.”

She sweeps around, taking her cloak with her and leaves him angry and speechless in the hall.

 

* * *

 

That night at dinner there is an unusual stillness to the affair. Everyone sits contemplative, unsure of what was to come now that they have lost an army to their cause.

Jaime and Tyrion sit together, eating quietly.

“It’s good to see you,” Tyrion says.

“I’m glad you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere either,” Jaime grins back.

“Now tell me, how _did_ you ever end up on Daenerys Targaryen’s side?”

Tyrion shrugs, tearing into another roll of bread.

“Life works in mysterious ways brother.”

Jaime sighs. He thinks of Cersei’s face when she had nodded, actually nodded to give the order to kill him. Him. Her twin _,_ her lover, her other half.

“That it does.”

Tyrion puts a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Jaime is quiet. “It should have ended a long time ago.”

He suspects his little brother wants to say something like it should have never started in the first place but is grateful when the words don’t come.

He looks up to see Jon Snow glaring at them from across the room.

“He looks like he’s ready to kill you,” Tyrion says with a hint of mirth.

Jaime keeps his gaze and slowly lifts his mug of ale in Jon’s direction.

The Lord of Winterfell almost bears his teeth. The white beast of his lying next to him certainly does.

“Don’t do that, you could be killed in an instant. This is direwolf territory remember?” Tyrion says.

“Not while I’m serving under Sansa Stark I won’t.”

“Ah yes, my dear wife. Her heart was soft but I’m afraid it has grown rather hard lately, and rightly so. You should tread carefully. Snow is very protective of her.”

Jaime sips on his mug, his eyes still on Jon. The Lord of Winterfell turns away from him with only a thinly veiled look of distain to where Sansa and Brienne were seated.

He watches him catch Sansa’s eye with a hopeful look, but she glosses over him and looks away. Daenerys Targaryen then leans over to Jon and places a hand on his arm, saying something in his ear. A few seconds pass before he looks her way.

A crease forms between Jaime’s eyebrows. That look, to him it was all too familiar. He watches the Lord and Lady of Winterfell more closely, eyes narrowed. Then Jaime sits back on his chair and takes a long drink of his cup.

“As he should be,” he murmurs.

 


	4. Until Dawn

Jon watches as Sansa crosses the courtyard with Brienne and Jaime in tow.

A dark feeling pools at the bottom of his stomach when he looks at the twin Lannister. Even without his golden trinkets Jon sees a lion in false clothing.

He won’t believe that the Kingslayer has changed, no matter how highly Brienne or Tyrion think of him. He has no place next to Sansa, or in Winterfell for that matter.

“I know it’s not ideal your grace, but right now we need all the men we can get.”

Jon turns to Ser Davos who is watching Jon watch them.

“He pushed Bran out of a window. Do you know what he wanted to be when he was younger Ser Davos? A knight. Now he will never walk again.”

The older man clears his throat but does not immediately reply.

“I know that. But like it or not, he is Lady Sansa’s sworn shield.”

After one last look Jon turns from the courtyard and begins to walk away.

“For now, he is.”

 

* * *

 

“Must be nice, having two personal guards.” Arya says, biting into an apple in one hand and balancing a dagger in the other. She’s sat on a ledge of the wall and is swinging her legs. Sansa can hardly believe this girl who can barely touch the ground with her feet is a Faceless assassin.

They are outside at one of the forges, watching Gendry work as he hammers away at preparing dragon glass weapons.

Sansa looks at her sister and gives a half smile.

“I only have them because I need them. You don’t.”

Arya smirks and doesn’t deny it. The smirk then disappears and turns pensive when she spots Brienne and Jaime conversing together by the stables. Jaime is speaking with a lot of gestures while Brienne listens intently.

“She likes him.”

“They’ve been through a lot together, I’ve been told. He even saved her from a bear.” Sansa says.

“I still don’t trust him.” Arya mutters. Sansa resists rolling her eyes a little.

“You and Jon both.”

Arya turns to look at Sansa, a serious expression on her face.

“You should listen to Jon more. I don’t know why you’re always going against him. I know you two weren’t ever close but he’s a good person,” she says.

“Don’t you trust him?” Arya asks, her brown eyes fixing on her.

Sansa pauses and mulls it over. Trust. That was a difficult word. Among the people still living in this world Sansa trusts very little of them. She wrings her gloved hands together.

“It’s difficult to explain. Jon and I don’t agree on a lot of things. It’s not like I don’t trust him. I do,”

Sansa kicks at loose rocks on the ground.

“I really do.” The last part was added as an afterthought, but Arya looks up when she hears the change in tone in Sansa’s voice. It had become quiet, and distant.

Arya looks at Sansa then, really looks at her for a long time. For such a long time the redhead starts to shift uncomfortably on her feet. She exhales lowly when Arya suddenly turns to watch Gendry.

“Fine work my lord!” she shouts at him.

“Still small and still a pain in my arse,” Gendry mumbles.

Arya grins, a rare sight. She turns back to Sansa with dark eyes.

“Well, if you change your mind about the Kingslayer just give the word and I can take care of it.”

Sansa watches as Arya tosses up the remains of her apple core into the air. One moment the apple is above their heads and the next it is pinned to the opposite wall by the dagger. A ringing sound vibrates around them. Gendry whistles.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Arya.”

 

* * *

 

Sansa walks away from her sister and the blacksmith with a hurried pace.

Her heart was hammering hard in her chest. Did Arya know? She seemed to.

Perhaps Jon was right, what would Arya do if she found out there was something between her and Jon?

Jon, her favourite sibling and her, the sister she was just beginning to trust.

Sansa doesn’t think Arya would go as far as to actually hurt her, but it wasn’t to say she hadn’t been threatened by her little sister before.

They had just reached a common understanding and Sansa felt closer to Arya for the first time in a long time. It was such a fragile thing, to be encouraged and planted to grow.

She places a hand over her beating heart and wills herself to calm down. There was nothing more to tell Arya, everything would be fine.

“My lady, are you alright?”

Sansa turns to her male sworn shield, startled by the question. She takes a moment to compose her expression before answering, however when she looks at Jaime she wonders if _she_ should be asking the question to him instead.

The former Kingsguard member looked five years more than his actual age. She could see that the man had been through a lot recently. With just arriving in Winterfell after a hard ride from the capital and a broken heart no doubt from severing from Cersei, he looked worse for wear, and here he was asking about _her_. Sansa is oddly touched.

“Ser Jaime I–”

Jaime puts up his hand to stop her.

“Please, call me Jaime,” he says.

“Jaime.” Sansa tests in unfamiliar informality. 

“Thank you for your concern but I’m alright. However, from the looks of it you are the one who needs a rest. You can retire for the night, Brienne can accompany me for the rest of the evening. You must be still exhausted from your journey from Kingslanding.”

Jaime looks surprised, as if he’s never been given this type of courtesy before serving under his other lords.

“Well Lady Sansa, that is very kind of you.” He turns to Brienne who just smiles and gives Sansa a nod before departing.

“Excuse me then, my ladies.”

 

* * *

 

When Jaime reaches the quarters he has been given he begins to shrug off his cloak when he hears footsteps following into the room behind him.

“What is it Brienne?” he asks without turning around.

When he doesn’t hear a reply Jaime turns, and is face to face with the Lord of Winterfell.

The door closes behind him.

Jaime is surprised, but he manages to keep his voice nonchalant.

“My lord?”

Jon takes a step towards him, and underneath his cloak Jaime can see his sword, complete with a white wolf pommel. _Valyrian steel_ , Jaime thinks.

“I don’t know what your game is with Sansa, but I’m telling you now Kingslayer. If you touch her, betray her, or even take one step out of line, I will kill you myself.”

While Jaime isn’t unused to receiving threats, something about Jon tells him he is not to take his words lightly.

Inside he smiles. _So, he was right_.

“I am not going to do that. I wouldn’t even think of it or Brienne will have my head herself. I assure you. I pledged myself to Sansa for the right reasons,” Jaime says.

Jon gives a loud scoff.

“The right reasons. I didn’t know you had those words in your vocabulary, Kingslayer.”

_I ran my sword through him one more time, just to make sure. “Burn them all,” he kept saying. “Burn them all.”_

Jaime shrugs and pours himself a glass of wine. He offers one to Jon first who makes no move to take it. Jaime drinks it himself.

“Well, I guess you don’t know a lot of things about me.”

He then lowers his voice and speaks honestly. “I won’t hurt Sansa. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Jaime doesn’t know how many times he has to repeat this to Jon, it seems he will never truly believe him. And Jaime guesses he understands, if their roles had been reversed and it had been Cersei, Jaime wouldn’t have even let him have the opportunity to pledge themselves to her in the first place. He’d already be dead.

Jon’s eyes narrow but he seems to accept his answer. Jaime lets his shoulders loosen. It would have been a shame to be killed in his first day of Winterfell trying to do the right thing.

It’s silent for a few moments, the two men just watching each other warily from across the room.

Soon it turns awkward for Jaime. All he wants to do is take his cloak off and go to bed but an angry direwolf was here, and Jaime was in its territory.

“I assume you’ve said all that you wanted?” he prompts.

Jon draws himself to his full height and looks Jaime in the eye.

“I expect you to lay down your life for Sansa. If you prove your loyalty, in time I may even consider forgiving you for what you’ve done to my family.”

Jaime’s jaw works at that. He doesn’t think he will be able to tell Jon how sorry he was for pushing his brother, but he knows he will never believe it so instead he keeps his mouth shut.

 _Do you think the honorable Lord Stark would have listened?_ Jaime gives a rueful smile, how history repeated itself.

But when it looks like Jon starts to turn to leave, Jaime makes the decision to approach him. Maybe he can never tell him how sorry he was about Bran, but he could give Jon something else, something he knows won’t be a consolation for what he did, but it was something Jon could appreciate, if not now he would in time. At least Jaime could say that he tried.

He could see that Jon was fighting for Sansa as fiercely as Jaime ever did for Cersei. It was hard, to conceal love and Jaime has been doing it ever since he was a boy, and it had costed him everything. 

So he continues forward despite being keenly aware of that Valyrian steel sword that rested on Jon’s side.

He takes a deep breath and just says it.

“You know, we don’t choose who we love.”

The Lord of Winterfell stops with his hand halfway to the door and turns back to glare at Jaime before replying darkly.

“What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything, my lord.”

“Careful with your words Kingslayer, one day you may not have a tongue to speak them,” Jon threatens.

Jaime puts up his arms in defense.

He can see that Jon is struggling to brush off his comment, but he knows better.

“I know what you’re thinking. But you are not me and she is not Cersei. Why torture yourself more than you need to? The war is here, who knows how much longer we all have.”

Jon takes a step towards him, his anger flaring.

“I think you forget yourself Lannister, and I do not appreciate the familiarity. Do not speak on things you know nothing about.”

Jaime sucks in his teeth. 

“Oh, but I think I do know and I know there’s no point in fighting it,” 

“Life is short Jon Snow, and with what’s coming it will probably be shorter. Sansa deserves some happiness, doesn’t she?”

Jaime watches as Jon retches open the door and storms out, shoulders hunched and face impassive. Jaime watches after him and sighs. He is sure the Lord of Winterfell will figure it out, sooner or later.

  

* * *

 

The night has been quiet and uneventful with Sansa passing the time by keeping the books in her solar.

She listens to the quiet scratch of her quill and feels her shoulders relaxing.

Earlier she had finished a new tunic for Arya and it lays on her bed, the dark leather shining. Sansa glances at the leftover material in the basket. She wonders about making Jon another cloak too before pushing away the idea.

He had been so angry with her when she had taken Jaime Lannister as her sworn shield. Sansa understood, but she also relished it. It was time Jon felt even a little bit of what he has made her feel.

But then like always the relish slowly turned into a small misery. How long was she really going to keep fighting Jon? The needed to be a team, if not for Winterfell but for the war’s sake.

She knows they are both tired. Why did he always have to pull away from her?

She turns the quill in her hand, deep in thought.

A knock rouses her from her daze and she looks up.

When she opens it a handmaiden is there, holding a plate of– were those lemon cakes with a slice missing on one the side?

“Who sent these?” she asks, baffled.

“I don’t know my lady, I was instructed to bring these up to you from the kitchens,” the handmaiden says.

Sansa takes them and thanks her.                                                                                                     

She sets the plate on her desk, half confused and half in glee. She has not seen lemon cakes in what seems like years.

Who would send these to her? Sansa is sure most who knew these were her favourite were either dead or gone. She doubts Arya or Bran would take the time to send them, or Tyrion for that matter.

She looks at them closely and sees what looks like canine bites leftover from the missing slice.

A peace offering then, was it? She wonders what changed his mind.

But Sansa doesn’t mind his reasons at that moment. She picks one up gingerly and takes a bite.

It may have taken a while, but they tasted oh so sweet.

 

* * *

 

The next evening Sansa exits her room and closes her door with a soft click. It was late, and much of the castle was already asleep.

She had dismissed Brienne and Jaime hours ago and sets down the hall, a bundle in hand.

The guards move aside for her when they see her coming.

The room was dark, with the only light coming from the dying fire and a few candles scattered on tabletops. Jon is at his desk, concentrated on reading a piece of parchment. Sansa sees he has let his hair down for the day, the dark curls reminding her of when he was younger.

“Jon.”

He looks up and Sansa is surprised he didn’t hear her come in.

He takes a deep breath. “Sansa.”

She takes a seat before the hearth and motions for him to join her. She waits until he’s seated before she speaks. After all that had happened Sansa could have said a hundred important things, but what comes out of her mouth was not one of them.         

“How did you get lemons in winter?” she practically blurts out.

It takes him a moment to register what she has said. After their fight yesterday, Sansa is sure Jon had been expecting more of a fight.

“Well it wasn’t easy,” he mumbles eventually. He doesn’t look at her when he replies. Sansa’s mouth parts slightly at his answer. Was he being _shy_?

“Well… thank you. They were delicious, even if Ghost took a bite.”

“I couldn’t stop him,” Jon laughs quietly. He offers out a hand.

“Truce, then?”

Sansa looks at it for a moment, eyebrows raised.

“You think sending lemon cakes would make everything better?”

Jon sighs. “It was worth a try. I’m tired of fighting Sansa,”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry about Jaime. I know I should have trusted your judgement.”

Sansa smiled, it felt like an invisible weight had been lifted off of her chest. It felt good to finally hear those words from Jon and she appreciates the sincerity in his voice.

“Thank you. And I’m sorry too. You are the Lord of Winterfell and the military man and I know you have your reasons for the things you do.”

She reaches behind her.

“Here, I made you a new cloak.”

She watches as Jon takes it and examines the material, marvelling at the double direwolf heads embroidered at the collar.

“Thank you, Sansa.”

“I’m glad. I’ve missed being able to talk to you,” she says honestly.

She smiles and pauses before placing a hand on top of his gloved one. It had meant to be a brief touch, but suddenly Sansa finds that she is unable to move her hand away.

The action comes as a surprise to Jon and for a moment Sansa thinks he will pull away, and tries to ignore the hurt blooming in her chest. But Jon only moves to remove the glove before placing his hand back under hers.

Then something moves over Jon’s face and he turns his hand so that his fingers interlace with hers.

Sansa thinks it’s her turn to be shocked.

It’s only a small movement, but she feels something warm unfurl in her chest. They sit in the quiet for a long time before she speaks.

“It’s soon isn’t it, the Great War?” she says.

Jon swallows hard and stares into the fire. It’s a while before he replies to her.

“Aye, it is.”

She holds her breath as his eyes wander down and take in her hand in his before tracing back up to her face. Sansa feels the heat rising in her cheeks the whole way. It was hesitant, but Jon has always been hesitant around her.

Sansa stays still as Jon moves his chair closer, the sound of the legs scraping across the floor sending small chills down her spine. He stops when their knees are next to each other’s, almost touching.

She lowers her head until it rests on his shoulder. When she feels the air slowly leave his chest she closes her eyes.

And that’s where they stayed, hands interlocked and heads close, until dawn.

 


	5. War

When Sansa wakes, the first thing she notices is the dull light streaming into the room through the windows. Judging by its grey colour she guesses it is not nearly morning.

She starts to shift and winces, her back aching from sitting upright all night. While moving to get into a better position Sansa notices there was now a blanket over her that hadn’t been there when she had fallen asleep. When she pulls it close it smells like Jon. She lets a small smile through then, before noticing he was no longer beside her.

She turns around to see Jon at his desk again, reading the same piece of parchment he had been holding the night before.

“Good morning,” she says.

Jon looks up and Sansa notices dark circles under his eyes that weren’t there previously. He was fully dressed for the day and looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

“Good morning,” his voice is rough.

“What is that?” Sansa asks. She eyes the letter curiously, whatever was on it seemed to bother him.

Jon gives a heaving sigh. 

“A scroll, from Eastwatch.”

A sense of dread slowly pools at the base of Sansa's stomach. She wonders what could have happened at Eastwatch. Tormund and his men had been sent there not long ago.

“What does it say?”

Without answering Jon gets up and walks over, stopping in front of her. Sansa looks up at him with questioning eyes.

She doesn’t move as Jon leans down and places a kiss on her forehead. His lips were warm, and she closes her eyes. They stay like that for a moment, and Sansa feels at peace. Then she moves away.

“I should probably go before Brienne or Jaime notices I’m gone,” she says. A rough thumb strokes her cheek and she resists leaning into his touch.

“Alright,” Jon says quietly.

He lets go of her and Sansa gets up from the chair to stretch out her tired limbs while Jon leans back on the wall and watches her.

Approaching the mirror she grimaces when she sees her reflection. Sansa looked dishevelled to say the least, and her hair was in a state of disarray. The intricate braid she had worn the day before was now half coming loose with red strands sticking up in odd directions. She begins to pluck out the hair pins and starts collecting them between her teeth.

Sansa thinks she’s found most of them but can still feel a few trapped in the mess. She begins to tug harder at her hair, but a hand stills her own.

Jon has come up behind her and begins to weave out the remaining accessories, his hands gentle. Sansa lets her arms fall to her sides and stays very still as Jon tends to her hair. He works quietly and slowly, and when the last pin is out he begins combing through her hair with his fingers instead.

Neither of them make a sound and Sansa feels this is strangely intimate.

When he’s finished she opens her eyes in a daze. He smiles at her softly.

“I’ll see you soon.”

 

* * *

 

Sansa makes her way back to her room at a slow pace. Not many people were awake yet, and those who see her don’t comment on her unusually unkempt appearance.

When she rounds the corner to her room she sees Brienne and Jaime’s in a hushed argument, heads bent low.

“How would I know where she’s gone?” Sansa hears Jaime say.

“You were meant to come check on her!” Brienne hisses back to him.

They stop when they see her approaching. Brienne looks relieved.

“My lady! When I knocked you didn’t answer. We were worried.”

"I’m fine Brienne. I just went on a… morning stroll.”

“You should be careful.” Brienne shakes her head. “You didn’t bring your cloak; your cheeks are still red from the cold my lady.”

Sansa’s hands reach up to touch her cheeks. They were warm.

She ignores Jaime’s odd smile as she steps into her room.

Once inside Sansa decides to take special care to get ready for the day. She has a bath prepared and scrubs her skin clean and washes her hair.

From her closet she chooses a dark gown, the two silver direwolf heads on the collar glinting in the mirror back at her. She fingers the large metal circle that sat above her heart before pulling on her cloak, the fur wrapping around her throat.

Looking at her reflection mid hair brush Sansa is suddenly struck by the image of her lady mother. She is reminded of how much she looked like her. From behind her red hair would surely fool some into thinking she was a different person.

Soon she’s also struck by the thought of how much Jon looked like their father. All her life Sansa had been told that of all of his true born sons, it was Jon who looked like the younger self of Ned Stark. Thinking back to the morning, Sansa can't help but notice it now too. With his dark hair slicked back and the cut of this jaw, Jon was a spitting image of Ned.  

Sansa wonders what father would have thought, seeing them now all back in Winterfell. She sighs as she twists her hair. They should have never left.

She calls for her handmaiden and her hair is fixed into a rope braid that met in the middle at the back of her head before falling down towards her spine.

Sansa blinked again at her reflection. Her mother had worn this style many times before. She really did look like Catelyn.

Turning away from the mirror she heads to the dining hall.

 

* * *

  

Sansa is halfway there when a white flash appears in the corner of her eye. She turns around to see Ghost, a scroll between his massive jaws. He pads up to her and nudges her hand with his wet nose.

“Hello. What do you have there for me?”

She uncurls the note.

_Meet me in the Godswood – Jon._

Sansa clutches the note close to her chest and follows the direwolf to its owner. He waits for her to catch up at the entrance of the Godswood before striding back towards the castle.                                                                                

In the distance Sansa can see Jon already sitting there, beside the pond at the base of the Weirwood tree. It was snowing again, and Sansa carefully wades through slippery ground.

“You asked for me?” she says, taking a seat next to him.

Jon nods, fingering a letter in his hands. The note from Eastwatch. She holds a hand out to receive it.

But before Jon passes it to her he reaches up into her hair with his other hand. Snow has collected in her braid and Jon brushes it lightly away before moving back a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. Sansa can feel them start to burn at the contact. She lets out a long breath when he moves his hand away.

He gives the letter to her silently.

_Dead army has overrun Eastwatch. Ice dragon has melted down the wall. They are coming._

Sansa’s hands are suddenly cold and she nearly drops the scroll.

She reads it three times over before turning to Jon. He looks tired. 

“An ice dragon...?” she says in disbelief.

“It is one of Daenerys’. Viserion. They must have revived it somehow with their magic.”

Sansa blinks at Jon, the words that had come out of his mouth suddenly don't seem to make sense to her ears.

“What… what are we going to do?” she says.

Jon doesn’t look at her when he speaks.

“The only thing left to do. We’re going to meet them in battle. Try and hold them off as long as possible. If they pass the Gift, Winterfell will be right in their path.”

Sansa’s throat is dry. A dead army was marching south at that very moment. Winter was really here.

“I’ve called a council meeting, but I thought you should hear it first.”

She nods numbly.

“Thank you Jon.”

He looks like he’s about to say something back when they both look up to approaching footsteps. Ghost had returned with Bran and Arya.

Sansa slips her hand under her cloak to find Jon’s and squeezes tight.

The Lord of Winterfell braces himself as he gathers his siblings around the Weirwood tree before they all make their way to the great hall together.

 

* * *

 

Nearly all of Winterfell’s remaining inhabitants have gathered. The Starks stood side by side at the head table. Daenerys was seated and looked curiously at Jon through her dark lashes. Sansa tries to ignore her gaze.

Jon holds up the letter for everyone to see.

“The dead army have taken Eastwatch by the Sea,” he announces.

Around the room shocked murmurs rise and people close their eyes in horror. A few women begin to cry.

“The Wall has fallen. And if this is to be believed, they have an ice dragon.”

Daenerys sits up, eyes wide.

“What did you say?” she gasps.

“Tormund and a few of the remaining men have managed to escape and find a safe location for the time being, but it won’t be long before they reach the nearby villages, then the Gift and after eventually to Winterfell. We need to stop them before that,”

“We need to start preparing the armies and loading up the supplies. We must leave on the morrow.”

Sansa’s eyes snap to Jon but he avoids her gaze.

Arya stands up in an instant.

“Let me come with you,” she says. Sansa’s heart stops momentarily in her chest.

All eyes turn to the younger Stark sister. Gendry is horrified. Jon looks at her warily.

“I can’t let you come with me. It’s too dangerous. You will stay here in Winterfell where you belong.”

“You are having boys and girls training for this war and I am better than all of them. Let me fight with you, I can handle myself,” Arya argues.

And Sansa knows it’s true, but she can’t bear the thought of Arya leaving too. Two of her siblings would go to war, and two may not return.

“Arya I won’t allow it. You will stay in Winterfell with Sansa and Bran,” Jon says with finality in his voice.

Arya is furious, Sansa could tell, but she doesn’t say anymore. When Gendry reaches to rest a hand on her shoulder, Arya rips it away and slips out of the room.

Ser Davos clears his throat and speaks up.

“Summer is over my lords, and the dead are coming. We’d best prepare for a fight.”

 

* * *

 

Afterwards Sansa leaves the great hall, leaving Daenerys and her small council to discuss battle plans with Jon and the other Northern lords. Daenerys is distraught at the thought of her dragon being resurrected and Sansa turns away when Jon tries to comfort her.

And despite everything Sansa does feel sorry for the Dragon Queen. To head towards battle to one you have raised as your own, she can’t fathom it. She imagines having to fight Lady, and she can’t stomach the thought.

So she makes herself scarce, figuring she will be more useful out of the way. After all, she knows nothing about battles and she knows Jon will inform her later. Jon was the military man, and she was the Lady of Winterfell. There was need to try and figure a way to keep her people calm. But first she seeks out her sister.  

She finds Arya on the training grounds, Needle in hand. She approaches her cautiously.

“You’re not really thinking of fighting, are you?” she asks.  

Arya doesn’t turn around.

“I am, and you or Jon aren’t going to stop me,” Arya spits hotly. Sansa bites at her lip. How could she change Arya’s mind?

“But what if you get injured, or worse? These aren’t people you’re fighting against Arya, these are _things._ Monsters. They won’t show you mercy, to them you are just another breathing thing to kill.”

Arya stops her exercises to look Sansa in the eye.

“How is that different from any other person that has ever hurt our family?”

Sansa is left with no response to that, shocked at the truth in her sister’s answer. She buries her face in her hands.

“How can I sit here while my siblings go to battle?” Sansa mumbles.

“You were never a fighter. You are the Lady of Winterfell and you belong here with its people,” Arya says simply.

“And I suppose what, you belong out there, in the battlefield?” she shoots back.

Arya resumes her training. Sansa watches Needle slice into the air in impossibly quick strikes.

“Father always told me that I looked like Aunt Lyanna. She could fight too, you know. I will never be a lady, so I became someone else. What use would I be in Winterfell? Sitting around? I don’t know anything about keeping a castle or sympathising with the common folk or keeping the supplies. I belong where I’m useful, and that is in this war. Next to Jon.” There is an unusual vulnerability in Arya’s tone and Sansa feels her throat seize up. 

And Sansa wants to disagree, she really does but deep down she knows Arya is right. Even if she did stay with her and Bran Arya would eventually follow Jon north, and if not Jon, Gendry. She wouldn’t be able to help it, defiance was just in her blood, it has been since she was born.

Sansa takes a shuddering breath. “If that is really what you feel you need to do, I’ll accept it.”

The younger Stark sister looks at Sansa, a small crease between her brows. She doesn’t resist when Sansa comes forward to hug her.

“Just… take care of each other then, please. I’ve lost you once, and I don’t want to lose you again.”

Arya pats Sansa awkwardly on the back and tells her she will see her when they return.

Sansa closes her eyes and hopes to the gods that would be true.

  

* * *

 

The castle is busy with activity preparing for the departure. Soldiers are dismantling their tents and gathering up their supplies. Horses are saddled, and dragon glass weapons are passed out. Many begin to say goodbye to their loved ones.

That night a small feast is held, possibly the last moments of respite many will have.

There is a nervous tension in the air, but as the night goes on it is replaced by the dull drench of ale, but the stench of fear still lingers.

Sansa only picks at her meal, the nervousness that ate away at her stomach left no room for food.

Not many have joined her for dinner. Most were still in the war council, as they had been for a majority of the day since Jon’s announcement.

Sansa had been there for most of it, but exhaustion had begun to weigh down on her like a dam. Hearing Jon describe the White Walkers and their attacks left her stomach empty. She imagined Jon and Arya on the battlefield, wounded and surrounded. Eventually she had excused herself.

She doesn’t look up when a chair pulls up next to her.

“It seems my appetite has somewhat waned too,” a voice says.

“Lord Tyrion,” she greets.

The youngest Lannister sibling smiles, placing his cup of wine down next to him.

“The Great War, they are calling it. A war for the dawn.”

“They have an ice dragon,” she says bluntly. Sansa was in no mood for small talk.  

“And we have two living ones,” Tyrion replies smoothly.

He moves to place a brief hand on her own, just like he had after the Red Wedding and just like that time, it brought Sansa no comfort. Her family was going to battle tomorrow, and she may never see them again.

“I heard if we kill certain leaders all their henchmen die with them. That could mean dozens, or who knows, hundreds gone from one blow? Don’t give up hope my lady, we may still have a chance yet.”

Hope. Sansa chipped away at the bottom of her plate with her fork, the metal scratches filling her ears.

“I pray you are right my lord.”

The dwarf gives her a crooked smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I always am.”

  

* * *

 

That evening Sansa lay in bed, listening to the sounds of loading carts and hurried men. Tomorrow Winterfell will resemble a ghost town. Tomorrow the real war began.

Her thoughts wander to Jon, as they did more often with each passing day. She wonders what he was doing, probably finalising their battle plans. She hadn’t seen him all day.

And Sansa can’t deny it, fear gnawed at her insides, feeling as if it would turn her inside out. Arya had made her mind up to go with Jon and while Sansa knew both of them were capable fighters, she wonders how anyone could win against a dead army.

Then she remembers Daenerys’ dragons. Jon had been right, if they have any chance of winning, it would be with them. But _still_ –

Sansa shakes her head at herself. There was no use thinking of these things that she had no control over. The Starks have protected the North for thousands of years, and it may remain that way still.

But if it didn’t, tonight will be the last night she had with Jon. Sansa swallows hard. If this was her last chance to be with Jon, should she take it?

She replays the words he had said to her, _we’ll forget this ever happened._ But Sansa knows neither of them have forgotten.

When she thinks back to the morning her face burns with the memory. She remembers the feel of his hands in her own, had felt the rough rivets of his knuckles and the smoothness of his palms. Sansa thinks she’s memorized the feel of his hands by now, could know them over dozens.

She thinks about the chance to hold them again, just one more time. She also wonders if he would know the feel of hers too, wonders if he could pick them out amongst a crowd.

He had also kissed her forehead again; a feeling so sweet Sansa doesn’t think anything else compared. And all that had happened in the morning.

It was odd, it seemed so long ago now, almost another lifetime ago.

A lifetime without Jon, Sansa doesn’t think she could bear it.

After a dozen tosses and turns she sits up, her mind decided.

She wraps a cloak hastily around her shoulders and flings open the door to stop and find Jon already on the other side. She had to slow herself from crashing into him.

He’s startled at seeing her, his fist in mid-air. They’re both so surprised neither of them speak. Jon takes a moment to clear his throat.

“I know it’s late, but can I come in?”

Wordlessly she steps aside to let him in. When she turns from closing the door she starts to ask him about the war council but she’s stopped by Jon’s lips crashing onto hers. Sansa’s mind freezes for a fraction of a second, but then she regains her senses and kisses him back, twice as hard.

She clings to him, and she wants her lips to convey all the things her words could never say. _Stay with me stay with me stay with me._

“I don’t care anymore what I said about forgetting about it,” he gasps between kisses. As a response Sansa bites his lip, hard.

Jon makes a muffled sound at the back of his throat. She grabs the front of Jon’s shirt and drives him forward, further inside the room.

Maybe Sansa should feel bad about this, and maybe their family and their armies will never forgive them. Dozens of thoughts run through her mind, but none compare to the feel of Jon’s lips running up and down her neck. Tomorrow be damned, she needed him here now.

They were all heavy jaws and roaming hands and deep breaths. Sansa doesn’t remember quite how they got in this position, being crammed on top of each other on her bed but at that moment, she doesn’t really care. She remembers hitting her knee on the bedpost and Jon tripping over her furs on the ground. He had captured her muffled laugh in his mouth.

All Sansa knew was that it felt like her whole being was on fire and that she needs him closer, and closer still. Judging by the small sounds that came from Jon, she guesses he did too.

She watches as Jon takes a moment to pause on top of her, and he just looks at her, really looks at her. Although Sansa was still wearing her night shift, she feels more exposed than she is underneath his dark gaze.

“You really are beautiful,” Jon says.

Sansa feels the blush colour down to her chest. He kisses her again one more time, deeply. Her eyes flutter closed, and Sansa is happy. Unexplainably happy.

Jon buries his face in the side of her neck, and they lay there, just breathing with their arms wrapped around each other.

Sansa slowly moves to settle on her side, and Jon follows. His knees tuck into the back of hers and his arm settles around her chest. Sansa thinks the only sound in the room is the roar of her hammering heart.

They lay together in silence, but Sansa is fine with it. She doesn’t think any words could capture how she felt about this moment. She threads her hand with his.

“Come home safe,” she whispers after a long while into the dark.

Jon doesn’t reply for such a long time Sansa thinks he’s fallen asleep. When he speaks his breath tickles her neck, making the hairs stand with the closeness of it.

He kisses the soft spot behind her ear.

“I’ll try.”

 

* * *

 

The next day Sansa, Bran, Brienne and Jaime watch them depart from the ramparts. First Daenerys leaves on Drogon, its huge wings creating currents of wind around them. Then her armies leave slowly one by one.

Soon the Northern army is all that is left to depart.

Jon is next to his horse, speaking to the other lords.

Suddenly they look up to see something large approaching in the sky. Sansa quickly recognizes it to be Rhaegal, Daenerys’ green dragon.

Confusion ripples through the camp for a moment, and many move out of its way when it lands heavily in front of Winterfell’s gates.

It roars until people scatter away from it. Soon Jon is the only one still in his original spot, and he looks up at the winged beast with hesitation.

To everyone’s surprise it leans its neck down, extending itself towards Jon.

Sansa’s heart beat wildly in her chest, it was offering for Jon to be its rider.

Her grip on the ledge tightens and she leans forward to see, but Jon shows no fear in his movements as he climbed onto the dragon.

He does turn back around and spots her on the ramparts.

He raises one arm up slowly, and Sansa returns it with a heavy hand. She remembers how desperately she had clutched onto him in the morning and feels a stab in her chest.

She watches his lips move but can’t make out what he says.

Then Jon is up in the air, the dragon giving a roar that seemed to vibrate the earth.

After a long look back to them and Winterfell he disappears into the sky, and Sansa thinks a part of her heart has gone with him.

The image lingers behind her eyelids for the days to come, and it wasn’t until Sansa lay in bed one night she figures out what that image was.

On top of Rhaegal, with his Valyrian steel sword and dark armour, that day before the War for the Dawn Jon had reminded her of a Targaryen prince.


	6. Dark Dreams

Time passes by agonisingly slow for Sansa.

She worries, worries endlessly for Jon and Arya’s safety. Worse-case scenarios play over in her mind and nightmares plague her often restless sleeps.

She dreams of blood and black throats and shadows in the night.

When she feels that it all may spill over her boiling point, Sansa fingers the dragon glass dagger Jon had given her before he had left. She keeps it close in an inner  pocket sewn inside her sleeve at all times, as Jon had requested.

Carefully she would reach to stroke the cold surface and will herself to calm down. But whenever someone approaches her she steels herself for news from the battlefront, but Sansa knows it would be too early. They have only been gone for five days, but to her it was five days too long.

Keeping herself busy she sees to the slow rebuilding of Winterfell and the fortifying of its walls and gates. Trees are cut to make for barriers, children too young are trained in the courtyard with dragon glass weapons.

Sansa tries her best to console those who remain. They are mostly women, elderly and children and they cling to her day and night. She tries her hardest to listen to their cries and worries and fears without blurting out her own to them.

She was the Lady of Winterfell, and she has to be strong.

So on the sixth day she makes a decision. She approaches Brienne in the courtyard.

“I want you to teach me how to fight.”

Brienne looks up from her whetstone, her expression startled. In all her time serving Sansa Stark she had never thought of anything less likely to come out of her lady’s mouth. 

“Pardon, my lady?”

Sansa sighs and repeats herself. It had taken her a lot of time mulling over the idea to even think of approaching Brienne with her request. But she had decided she had had enough. She needed to protect herself and seeing Arya fight before she had left has made her all the more determined to do so.

Sansa is not a little dove; she is a direwolf. She needs to protect her pack. She needs to know how to use the dragon glass dagger if it came down to it.

Brienne’s eyes slowly fill with understanding as she takes in her lady’s words and gives a nod.

“If that is what you wish. But know Ser Jaime and I are here to protect you.”

Sansa knows, and for that she is grateful, but this was the War for the Dawn and her sworn shields may not be around to protect her forever.

It was time she took her protection into her own hands. Jon was no longer here, neither was Arya. But there one was sibling left to keep safe. She needs to keep Bran safe. He is permanently bound to a chair, and Sansa is the elder sister.

_In winter we must protect ourselves, look out for each other._

Sansa closes her eyes and sees her father.

_The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._

“Please Brienne,” she says.

The larger woman gets to her feet, Oathkeeper at her side.

“I will gladly train you Sansa.”

 

* * *

 

Her first training session is rough, to say the least.

Sansa’s stance is awkward and unbalanced, and she doesn’t remember the last time she had willingly put on a pair of breeches.

The increased freedom of moment without heavy skirts is unfamiliar to her, and Sansa finds herself tripping over her own two feet.

“Try a steadier stance, my lady. Like this.”

Try as she might Sansa mimics her teacher, but it isn’t quite the same. As the afternoon turns to evening Sansa still cannot get the move right and she groans in frustration.

“I’m hopeless,” she puffs like a child.

Brienne gives her a sympathetic look.

“It is your first lesson my lady, no one expects you to be perfect,” she says.

But the thing that irritated Sansa was that she _was_ perfect in everything she has ever done. Her sewing, her manners, her studies. Sansa has never been anything less than perfect, so she finds it hard to adjust. The perfect Sansa may have been long ago, but she was still inside her.

“Try not to overthink it,” Jaime suggests from the side-lines.

When she falls over trying to parry one of Brienne’s strikes her sworn shield announces it may be enough for the day. Sansa simply stays lying flat on the ground, gazing up at the darkening sky.

She wonders in Arya’s ‘training’ in Braavos if she had spent much time in a similar position. She doubts it, Arya has always been an adept fighter. Sansa remembers a rugged little northern girl shooting arrows into bullseyes while her frustrated brother watched.

Sansa sighs, and wonders if Arya is looking up at the same sky too.

 

* * *

 

When she receives the first letter from Jon Sansa devours the words like a woman starved.

To her disappointment it is short and to the point, informing her of their whereabouts and the harsh conditions they find themselves in. They have lost a few dozen men already, but the dragons are keeping their fires bright. They are rationing their supplies carefully and he hopes she and Bran are faring well.

Disappointed she sits back in her seat and tries to find a second meaning in it all. Only when she reads to the end, she notices something in the two small letters that were written.

_Yours, Jon._

Sansa traces over his rough handwriting with her thumb until the ink begins to fade. She knows that is not the proper way to send off a letter, and her heart begins to flutter.

 _Mine_ , she wonders.

She writes back to him informing him of life in Winterfell. Sansa had meant to keep it short as his was to her, but she begins to find herself describing her daily duties. She writes of her worries and fears of not being able to keep their people calm. She writes of her meagre training but the strength she finds in attempting to hold her own. She writes of Jaime and Brienne, of how they worry but conceal it to preserve her feelings. She writes of Bran and Maester Wolkan and the maids and the guards. She writes of how she misses him so.

In the end she reads it back and it occurs to her that it is very personal, but she cannot bring herself not to tell him these things.

Perhaps in reading these mundane ramblings Jon will receive some respite on the battlefield and remind him of the life he was coming back to. That he was coming back to _her._

She signs it carefully with her delicate hand.

_Forever yours, Sansa._

 

* * *

 

She is in the dining hall overseeing the afternoon meal when she notices a commotion through the windows. Men were gathering at the gates.

Sansa makes it to the ramparts with hurried steps and a loud heart.

Looking down at the northern plane she sees a small army approaching. Sansa grips at the ledge and wonders if Cersei has come through after all. But when she looks harder she sees no red House Lannister banner.

Beside her Jaime can’t believe his eyes.

“Who approaches?” a guard calls. A man at the front of the succession removes his dark hood to show a lopsided grin and greasy dark hair.

“Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, at your service.”

 

* * *

 

“What made you change your mind?” Jaime asks as they all sit in the dining hall.

“Well, I thought hard and realized I should probably be on the side with the big fucking dragons. Cersei won’t pay me enough gold in the world to be on the receiving end of those beasts. So, I gathered those who were willing and made the miserable trek here,” Bronn explains, picking at his dirty fingernails.

“Wasn’t easy, nearly froze to death,” he mutters. 

“Cersei, how is she?” Jaime asks with a black tongue. He ignores Brienne’s eyes on him.

“She’s taken to being locked up in the council chamber with that maester of hers. No one knows what they’re up to.”

Jaime imagines that old lecher’s hands on Cersei’s stomach. He wonders how much it has grown.

“Well we thank you, Ser Bronn. Your men are much appreciated,” Sansa says honestly. 

“No trouble milady, but I did it to save my own arse really.”

The table tenses around them, the guards unsure what to do with this sellsword speaking so brashly to the Lady of Winterfell. But Sansa only smiles and looks down at her lap.

“I can see why Tyrion likes you so,” she says.

“Yeah well, the little lord ain’t so bad either. If he gets out of this, I’ll buy him a drink,” Bronn says and kicks up his feet onto the table.

“Won’t we all,” Jaime mutters.

 

* * *

 

Lately Sansa finds herself spending more and more time with Bran and she begins to understand this Three Eyed Raven that was her brother.

They sit in the Godswood, speaking on the latest developments in the war. Well, Sansa speaks, and Bran mainly listens.

“This is good, we have more men,” Sansa says. As usual Bran shows no satisfaction at her words, only merely stares into the Weirwood tree.

“Can you see where they are now?” she asks.

She doesn’t flinch back as Bran tilts his head back and his eyes are suddenly completely white, iris’ and all. Sansa stays still as Bran wargs and patiently waits until he is back in his own body.

“They are returning from another fight. Many have fallen. The dragons are tired and the dead press on relentlessly.”

It is not good news, but Sansa needs to know.

“What about Jon and Arya?”

Bran is quiet for a moment and fear seizes at Sansa’s chest.

“They are alright. Jon is making sure Arya is safe.”

A slow exhale releases from her as she takes her hand away from her chest.

“I hope they come back soon,” she whispers.

And Sansa knows they will not be back soon and they will not come back without many having been lost, but she prays to the Old Gods anyway, to bring her family back home.

 

* * *

 

Two moons after Jon’s departure there is another call from the front gates.

“Riders approaching!”

From the courtyard surveying the strengthening of Winterfell’s walls Sansa runs as fast as her legs can take her, hands hauling up fistfuls of her dress and underneath it a hammering heart.

She wonders who could it be this time.

It has been weeks since she has last heard any word from the battlefront. The last news she received has been more of the same, and that the fighting has intensified.

_Please, let Jon and Arya be alright._

When she arrives, Bran has already been wheeled to the gates. She settles next to him and takes a hold of one of his hands. She thinks she feels a small squeeze back.

She holds her breath as the gates are being opened. Was it a messenger? A body? Jon? The Whitewalkers?

But what is revealed beyond the wooden barrier though is not what Sansa expects.

A heavy-set man, a woman and a babe are waiting on the other side.

Sansa is about to ask who they are, but Bran speaks first.

“Hello, Samwell Tarly.”

 

* * *

 

“I met Sam while I was passing through the Wall. He helped us get through,” Bran explains.

Sansa looks at this man with his red face and nervous fingers and smiles to herself. Of course him and Jon were good friends.

“Where have you been?” Sansa asks.

“I travelled to Oldtown. Jon sent me to train to become a maester for the Nights Watch, but now I’ve come to help him.”

Sansa watches as he looks around, obviously keen to see if the man in conversation was here.

“Jon has gone to fight,” she clarifies. “So has Daenerys Targaryen and the rest of the armies.”

She can’t help but agree when she sees his face fall.

“I was hoping to speak with him,” Sam says.

“About what?” Sansa asks. 

Sam seems to hesitate then and turns away from her questioning gaze.

“I believe it’s for Jon’s ears only. I’m sorry.”

From the corner of Sansa’s eye, she sees Bran look up and consider Sam with a peculiar look.

Puzzled, Sansa leans back on her chair but decides not to ask further. She lets Sam scramble to change the subject. He looks over to the woman and child next to him.

“Let me properly introduce my family. This is Gilly and little Sam,” he says with a burst of pride.

Sansa smiles and takes one of little Sam’s fingers in her hand.

“Hello you,” she whispers.

“Do you want to hold him?” Gilly asks.

Sansa holds her arms out and the baby is placed into her embrace. He is heavier than he looks, but Sansa has a steady hold.

She looks down at this child with bright eyes and fat cheeks. He gurgles as he pulls on her hair. Sansa wonders what future this little baby will have and hopes it will be a good one.

Growing up it was always expected for Sansa to become a mother. It was what ladies were taught, and it was what ladies did.

Once upon a time all Sansa had wanted to do was to have little golden-haired children with Joffrey. But now after everything has been said and done Sansa has not thought about children in a long time. Being honest Sansa had nearly ruled out having children forever.

But now holding little Sam there is an unfamiliar warmth in her chest. How wondrous was it, to have a little person of your own to cuddle and coddle and love and kiss.

Sansa has not thought about children in a long time, but now she imagines a brown eyed boy with dark curls and a little girl with hair kissed by fire. 

 

* * *

 

The skies grow darker each day, and it becomes colder and colder until even the hot springs underneath Winterfell aren’t enough to warm them. Fires are constantly lit in every hearth, and Sansa hands out more blankets and cloaks.

She doesn’t remember the last time she has seen the sun.

Her people are suffering, she can tell. She passes gaunt and hopeless faces in the halls. It is not uncommon to hear a sobbing cry.

She and Brienne move her training grounds inside from the cold, clearing a room of tables and chairs.

The sound of steel meeting steel echo outside the windows.

“Good Sansa, move your feet!”

She is still clumsy, but she manages to evade an incoming lunge. 

Sansa’s forehead is dotted with sweat and her arms and legs ache with the constant practice, but she is getting better, little by little.

Sansa knows she could never win a one on one duel if it came down to it, but she knows enough to handle herself to get away from an enemy. 

When she blocks Brienne’s blow for the first time the impact vibrates up her arm and a surge of pride flows through her. Granted it had been slow and Sansa had expected it, but her reflects reacted with enough time to stop it.

The blonde woman grins and lowers her sword. Jaime whistles from the door.

“Fierce defence Lady Stark, a direwolf through and through,” her male sworn shield claps.

Sansa is smiling, and she doesn’t remember the last time she had felt genuine pride for herself. She’s about to ask Brienne to come at her again when Maester Wolkan appears. Jaime moves away from the doorframe to let him pass.

Sansa’s smile fades when she sees the older man’s face. It was hesitant, and a scroll was in his hands.

“A letter my lady, from the Warden of the North.”

Sansa immediately drops her sword and it clatters to the floor. She takes the scroll from him with shaking hands. Brienne and Jaime are alert, moving towards their lady with concern.

Sansa unfurls the note with a racing heart.

_Sansa, we have lost the front lines. Daenerys and a dragon are injured. Each day they are overwhelming us. There seems to be no end to their army. Sansa, I know this will be hard but please take Bran and flee South. Listen to me, I know there must always be a Stark in Winterfell but there may not be a Winterfell left after all is done. Please trust me and go, get as far away as you can, we can’t hold them much longer –Jon, Warden of the North._

Sansa runs back to her chambers in a hurry, not caring if her people see her flustered and in breeches.

When she makes it to her desk she dips the quill into the ink to reply, but it spatters onto the page with her trembling movements. She wipes it away with her fingers, black smearing all over her hands. She doesn’t dwell on the fact that there is no mention of Arya.

_Jon, I will not leave Winterfell. Neither will Bran. Come home, come home to us. Bronn has arrived with an army from Kings Landing, but not by Cersei’s orders. There has been more dragon glass delivered from Dragon Stone. We have fortified the walls. All hope may not be lost. Just come home – all my love, Sansa._

Her breathing is shallow as she returns it to Maester Wolkan and he attaches the parchment to the messenger bird. 

_Please make it to Jon in time._

She watches it fly away into the white blizzard with a bleak feeling in her chest.

They were losing the war.

 

* * *

 

The Night King walks towards him, sword in hand.

Jon collapses onto his knees. The wound was bleeding too heavily now, and his vision was failing. He closes his eyes, and with a breath, murmurs a woman’s name.

Then the world bursts into fire.

 

* * *

 

Sansa dreams of dark things in the night.

They move in warped shapes, but Sansa cannot see them clearly. They linger beyond the trees, strange noises coming from the leaves.

Sansa runs, runs until she reaches a beach shore. She doesn’t know what happened, but the next moment she is pushed into the raging sea by an unknown force.

Sansa was a dot in a cascading canvas. Her throat fell to ash and she is pulled under the waves. For a moment the world is black and quiet before she propels herself back up to the surface.

The sky above was a red dawn. Terrifying hues of ruby glinted all around her. It was as if hell had descended upon earth, coating the world in blood.

Then a horn sounds. At first it sounded like a deafening roar, so much that she had to cover her ears from the thunderous drone. It seemed like dozens of cries joined in and for a moment she wonders if the world would crack with the sound.

The waves then began to grow violent and cold fear settled into her heart.

Something was coming.

It emerges out from the waves. She sees the wings first, brilliant and impossibly large they unfold into the sky until they reached their full lengths, creating a storm underneath it as a shower of red dripped from the dragon’s blue body.

She watches as it opens its large jaw, and she stares into its black throat. Not until it is high in the sky that Sansa sees it has a rider.

She looks in horror to see that the rider is Jon, and that his eyes were impossibly blue.

Sansa is shaken awake mid scream by a frantic Brienne.

Groaning she looks up to see her sworn shields, Brienne by her side and Jaime by the door. Their Valyrian steel swords shone in the dark.

“What’s going on?”

“The night guards my lady, they have spotted things moving in the trees.”

“Must be wild animals,” Sansa mutters, trying to lay back down to sleep despite knowing it may not come soon with the nightmare that still clung to the back of her eyelids. She opens her eyes wide when Brienne grabs at her shoulders and sits her upright again.

“No my lady, it’s them.”

Sansa freezes at the severity of the other woman’s tone. Jaime looks over to them, his eyes urgent. Focusing now she can hear loud commotion in the halls and outside the window the castle’s lights flare up, one by one. People were shouting and screaming.

Sansa doesn’t protest as she’s taken out of bed and dresses, her hands fumbling over the buttons and she shakes so much she wonders who has left the windows and doors open. But when she looks everything is shut, but the air is impossibly cold.

She can see her breath when Brienne fastens her cloak around her neck.

“We need to get somewhere safe. Now.”

Sansa looks out the window again to see the shadows that haunted her nightmares emerging from the forest line.

There was no other word to describe the feeling other than death.

Black spots creep in the sides of Sansa’s vision and she feels she may faint.

Winterfell was under attack.


	7. Flesh and Bone

Sansa trembles as she presses herself up against the wooden door.

She closes her eyes and tries to remember how she got here inside this dark room, but her memory is spattered like black ink on a page.

It had all happened in a raging blur.

Chaos had descended onto the castle, and the last time Sansa had seen the fighting it had been too dark for her to see who was winning.

She remembers frantically telling Jaime to get to Bran, and his promise to do so, but he and her brother were still nowhere to be seen. She recalls Brienne and her resigned face before Sansa had been forced to turn away from her. The blonde woman had stood tall, Oathkeeper steady in her large hands.

In the beginning they had barricaded the front gates, piled pillar after pillar against them, but it still wasn’t enough.

First the wind had come, impossibly bitter and cutting. Then the cold.

A sense of dread had slowly crept into the air before anyone knew what was happening. Then all seven hells broke loose as the dead army came.

Doors were smashed down, and windows were blown in with the force of winter.

Unnatural cries had filled the night, paining their ears with the bizarreness of it. Sansa and Brienne had made their way through the crumbling halls, passing yelling guards and crying children and dying men.

Sansa had tried to direct them to the great hall or the crypts, but it seemed nowhere was truly safe. She was the Lady of Winterfell and her duty was to her home and to her people, but nothing had prepared her for protecting them against the dead.

Sansa was just about to reach for a lone child when they had all looked up as a huge dark shadow had passed over Winterfell.

For a moment Sansa had thought it may have been Daenerys, or even Jon but when she had looked closer the dragon was not the colour blue that Rhaegal was.

Sansa had been frozen as she watched the ice dragon unleash its unnatural blue fire onto her home. Fear seized at her heart so strongly she was afraid something was physically wrong in her chest as she had watched the buildings she had been raised in catch fire and burn.

She had barely enough time to duck when she had realized that it was heading straight for the tower they were in. Brienne had taken them down to the stone floor and covered her with her strong arms. Sansa had screamed as it had rained fire down on the roof, and they had fled to the other side of the corridor just as the ceiling of it caved in with the weight of the flames.

Sansa was left in a part of her home that now opened up into the night sky where the ceiling should have been.

She watched as the dragon swopped overhead but as it did, she had caught the sight of a lone figure on the top of the tower opposite her.

Her heart had leapt up to her throat when she saw that the person was in a wheelchair.

“ _Bran! Bran!_ ” she had remembered screaming, had screamed until her throat was raw but he had not heard her.

Sansa didn’t understand how he got there then, or why. She still doesn’t. All she knew was that she needed to get to him before something happened.

She looked to see the dead dragon doubling back towards them.

She had begun to try and climb down the rubble that now cascaded into the courtyard but stopped when she had seen more dead men coming through Winterfell’s broken gates.

She had decided she could get to him from inside the castle.“Stay there Bran!” She had waved her arms frantically over her head to try and catch his line of sight but had stopped when she looked closer and saw that his head was bent back, loose and seemingly lifeless.

 _He’s warging_ , she had realized with slow horror.

She had tried to find who he had been warging into, but the dead still moved in guttural ways, and there were no animals in sight.

It wasn’t until a strangled cry came from the sky when she had looked upwards.

The dead Viserion began to writhe in strange ways, twisting and turning in the night air, its huge jaws snapping.

_The dragon. Bran was trying to warg the dragon._

Sansa couldn’t fathom it then and she still can’t wrap her mind around it now, but she remembered that it had looked as if it been trying to fight back against his control.

She had shielded her eyes from the heat when it began to spray fire into the courtyard, setting alight dozens of men, dead or alive.

When she turned back she had caught the last glimpses of Viserion landing heavily in the courtyard, its massive body shaking the earth. Men had been charging at it with dragon glass spears and swords while it breathed heavy fire into the night sky.

Her mind was numbing at witnessing the battle around her, but all Sansa knew was that she needed to make it to her brother, he wasn’t safe exposed on top of that building. But when she heard hissing and bones rattling she knew she needed to get away from the place she was at first.

_Hold on Bran, I’m coming._

When she had heard another strangled screech, Sansa had assumed the dragon had broken out of Bran’s control. She didn’t look back to see the horror of it if it was true.

Brienne had ushered them further, cutting down anything in their way. It was only when she turned to Sansa at the bottom of the staircase and had pressed herself to the door had she told her to run. Run and hide while they were approaching.

Their gnarled cries were loud on the other side of the door, echoing throughout the castle. The wood was being pounded at with dozens of dead hands.

“I’ll hold the door!” Brienne had heaved out, sweat collecting on her forehead with the weight of them.  

Sansa hadn’t of wanted to be left alone, but they were being overrun. It seemed an endless stream of dead were coming after them. She knew Brienne had stop them from coming up the stairs through the door but couldn’t accept it.

Brienne had withdrawn Oathkeeper with one hand, the sword a flash in the dark.

“Go my lady. I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.”

The other woman had looked solemn, but Sansa had recognized a hint of pride in her blue eyes.

 _Waters as blue as sapphires,_ Jaime had told her.

Sansa had protested. She could not bear Brienne being hurt because of her. But after a thunderous warning with a steadfast gaze from her sworn shield Sansa had eventually left her a heavy heart and wet cheeks.

Now that had been a while ago, and Sansa has not seen Brienne since. She had just kept running, looking back in hopes of Brienne being behind her, but she saw only darkness.

She had stumbled and slid, the castle she had grown up in suddenly turning into a dark labyrinth with unrecognizable twists and turns.

It was a scene straight out of a nightmare, and Sansa couldn’t wake up. Her people were dying, she could hear their screams and prayers all around her. Her home was burning, and Sansa was alone.

She remembers falling and slamming into walls in her frenzied haste. She didn’t remember which direction Bran had been in at that point.

That was when she had truly felt the cold.

It had seeped into the hallway, light as mist and Sansa knew that a White Walker was near.

Jon had told her how it felt, how all your sensations seemed to numb and that the air got so cold it seemed to strangle the breath out of you.

Sansa had hidden in the nearest room, slamming the door behind her and had prayed to the Old Gods that it would simply pass without finding her.

So now as she pressed her back to the wall, Sansa listened to the footsteps in the hall, slow and steady and coming closer.

She holds her breath for so long her lungs start to burn for the need for air. Her knees began to shake, and her hands start to sweat. She reaches into her sleeve for the dragon glass dagger with clumsy fingers.

The thing stops in front of the door on the other side, and Sansa sees its shadow move underneath the gap of the door.

When it begins to open, the creak of it lasts for a lifetime. Sansa’s heart pounds as the door comes to a stop inches from her nose.

Heavy steps come to a halt, as if they have paused at the entrance of the doorway.

Sansa grips the dragon glass dagger close to her chest, her hands no longer sweating. If anything, her hands now were completely dry, the sudden cold seemingly evaporating all the moisture from the room.

Sansa no longer worried she’ll drop the dagger, she’s worried it is stuck frozen to her hand.

The footsteps begin ambling forward. They are slow, agonizing and ring in Sansa’s ears. She has to think fast. Was it worth it to run when it reached the inner room and risk a chase or to fight it?

Sansa was never a fighter, but if it came down to it she has to try. But all of Brienne’s lessons are suddenly a muddle in her mind and she can only concentrate on how cold she was now. Fear was driving deep in her chest, she could feel the ice slick of it running up her back.

The thing Sansa imagines was now examining the room, looking for something. It moved forward.

When it reaches the bed, Sansa thinks she should run. Freedom was only on the other side of the door, in seconds she could be gone.

She needs to be a direwolf and protect her pack, but then a thought makes Sansa pause.

_The lone wolf dies._

_Only the pack survives._

She thinks of her family, separated. Her grip loosens on the dagger.

Then suddenly the door slams shut, and Sansa is face to face with impossibly blue eyes.

 

* * *

 

They simply look at each other for a moment, Sansa’s heart stopping in her chest and it just watching her.

Its dark aura overwhelms her, almost swallowing her up with the blackness of it. There is no emotion in its face, no cruelty or anger or malice. Sansa thinks that terrifies her more.

Her mind screams at her that she needs to move, or else she’ll surely die. Sansa can feel the adrenaline starting to course through her veins.

The dagger in her hand shoots forward. She’s slashing aimlessly, hoping and praying it will hit it somewhere near its heart, if it had one.

It makes contact with its hard chest, and a deafening screech fills the room. Sansa thinks she hasn’t heard anything more terrible.

It was only a shallow cut, but enough to distract it for the moment.

She dives to the right, stumbling along the way on her skirts.

But a hand comes out and it grabs at her hair, the force of it surely pulling some out. She screams as she is hauled backwards by impossible strength and is slammed into the wall which she had hid against moments before. Pain explodes along her spine and she’s winded at the force of it. A ragged gasp comes out of her mouth.

The dagger falls from her grip on impact. Sansa watches as it hits the floor with an impossibly loud sound she doesn’t think anyone else hears.

It’s death, that is in its face she thinks.

The creature holds her there, its hands forcing her back by her shoulders. Sansa holds back a cry; its touch was so cold it burnt. Her feet dangled inches from the ground, helpless.

Then it opens its mouth and Sansa stares into the black hole of its throat. Its unnatural cry fills the room and Sansa screams with it.

She is going to die here she thinks, killed by a monster in the night. The nightmares of when she was a child finally come to life, just like the ones Old Nan had told stories about.

Sansa closes her eyes and thinks of Jon and Bran and Arya.

_It would be so sweet, to see them one more time._

A single tear slides down her cheek, but it freezes before it hits her chin.

But she opens her eyes again when the door suddenly bursts open and Jaime is there, eyes full of fear when he sees her pinned to the wall.

“Sansa!”

The torch in his hand thrusts forward onto the white walker’s back, and it drops Sansa as it jerks around to face him.

She falls to the floor in a slump, heaving deep breaths and clutching at her throat.

She watches helplessly as the Jaime unsheathes his sword with his left hand and parries just in time as the white walker unsheathes its own.

She watches them fight with a frozen body. Everything in her screams at her to move, to help him somehow, but every muscle in her body is paralyzed watching the terrible scene.

Jaime keeps up with it, returning its blows in a dance of swords and steel, but only as much as his left hand can hold him.

When he starts to fumble, and his movements start to slow Sansa is horrified.

 _He’s going to lose,_ she realizes.

Her horror them comes to life as the white walker brings its sword down with two hands, the force of it sending Jaime backwards and knocking Widow’s Wail from his grasp. She screams as it descends on him.

Jaime’s eyes are unfocused as he’s flung to the other side of the room, his body hitting the opposite wall with a sick crunch. Sansa screams at him, but he doesn’t get back up.

Then the white walker starts to turn back to face her, and it seems angry.

But Sansa is angry herself now, looking at Jaime’s unmoving body. She’s angry when she thinks of Brienne, how she could be dead somewhere in the castle. She’s angry that they are in her home, and that they do not belong here.

Grabbing at the dragon glass dagger from the floor Sansa summons all her strength she has left. She pours her anger and regret and fear into the swing and plunges the dagger into its back before it can fully turn back to face her.

The sheer force of it meeting its tough skin hurts her hand but she drives it forward, deeper and deeper into its skin.

Her ears explode with the strangled sound the white walker emits. She cries as she drives the dagger to its hilt.

Mid scream it slumps and falls to the floor.

Sansa stumbles back against the wall and watches with wide eyes as it shatters into hundreds of pieces before her. Something akin to dust is left behind where it had stood.

For a moment Sansa stares at the ground and shakes at the thought of what she has just done. She lets the dagger fall from her hands, clattering as it hits the hard ground.

Numbly she runs to Jaime and she tries to desperately feel for a pulse. Her hands scramble and press hard to the side of his neck, hoping for something _, anything_.

It takes a moment for her to concentrate enough to find the right angle.

The beat was faint, but it was there. A sob escapes her mouth and tears of relief fall on his unconscious cheek.

Sansa looks around at the wreckage of the room and knows that they have to leave. Standing up with shaking knees Sansa tries to haul Jaime up by his arms, but he is too heavy. In the distance she can hear more screams and she freezes in place. More dead were coming.

Grunting with effort now she tries to get Jaime up, but knows she doesn’t have the strength. Even without his armor she would never be able to get them both to safety.

With her heart beating erratically Sansa has to think fast. Grabbing the blanket from the bed she drapes it over him, turning his head to the side so he can breathe.  

“I’m sorry,” she whispers to her sworn shield.

She hates that she has to leave him, she hates how Winterfell is once again under attack and she hates that her family and friends are being taken away from her once again.

After kissing his still warm cheek Sansa runs. She runs as fast as her frozen legs can carry her. She needs to find Jaime help. She needs to find Brienne. She needs to find _Bran_.

She runs faster when she realizes that something is following her. She doesn’t turn back to look at who or what it was.

When once Winterfell burnt, it now froze.

Sansa slips on the ice that has formed on the floor. She passes closed doors and dark corridors, unsure of where she was. Corner after corner it seemed like a new place, and not the home she had grown up in.

Finally, she reaches a hall, the paths stretching out left or right.

Sansa stops, staring into the blackness of both ways. She wishes she had a torch.

But the growls were close now, she can hear them coming after her with the sounds of strings being pulled and the clashing of swords on stone walls. She imagines their gnashing teeth and warped screams and rattling bones. 

She chooses right.

Holding up her skirts she hurries, but when she reaches to the point the hallway twists, she collides into a hard chest. Cold hands grip at her forearms.

Her heart drops to the bottom of her stomach. She closes her eyes and waits for pain, to be thrown, _anything_. But instead she hears a familiar voice.

“ _Sansa_?”

She opens her eyes and she can’t believe what she sees.

He is covered in dirt and blood and cuts and bruises, but he was here _._

 _Jon_ was here!

She smiles and tries to reach out to touch his face, but her arm doesn’t reach high enough.

Her face twists into a grimace.

Jon’s eyes are wide.

Sansa looks down and doesn’t remember putting on a red dress when she had woken. She frowns, she doesn’t like the colour red for a dress.

Then her vision is lurching forward, and Jon catches her as she falls heavily towards the ground.

She tries to say something is wrong, but no words leave her mouth, only a strange sound. It takes her a moment to realize the gurgling noise is coming from _her_ , and her throat is being filled with something thick.

_Another one, behind you._

But Jon is looking at her, only looking at her with all the horrors of the faces of death.

_There Jon, turn around._

But he doesn’t turn, and she can’t get up.

The world fades into darkness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! This chapter was difficult to write. Action sequences and I don't really mix but I tried my best as a first attempt! Thank you all for continuing with this story, I am excited for the next chapter, which will be the last. As always, thank you all who have commented, continued to read and want updates from me.


	8. Truth

When Sansa comes to, it’s in her mother’s arms.

She looks into those familiar blue eyes and her kind smile and bursts into tears. She can’t help it; hard sobs rack her entire body with the force of them. Sansa cries her grief and sorrow and heartache into her mother’s lap like the small child she felt like she was.

Catelyn holds her daughter close and wipes the hair away from her face as Sansa clings to her like a babe.

“Hush my sweet girl, I’m here,” she says which only succeeds to make Sansa cry harder.

“How, why, I don’t understand.” The words tumble out of Sansa’s mouth in an uncomprehending mess. Her mother. Her mother is here.

“You called for me,” Catelyn says simply.

Sansa looks around and realizes they are in her bedchamber in Winterfell, but how it had been when she was a child. Her ragdolls are in one corner, and Lady rests in the other. Sansa holds out her hand for her direwolf and Lady pads towards her, licking at her fingers. Sansa rubs her wet nose.

Sansa is confused and tired, but strangely content. After a while of simply holding her mother and Lady settling down at their feet, Sansa musts enough courage to ask the question.

“Am I dead?”

Catelyn looks down at her daughter.

“Do you wish to be?”

She thinks of all the anguish in her life. As a girl Sansa had set out to Kings Landing with dreams of shining knights and gallant princes and the royal court. What she received was reality and beatings and betrayal.

She had lost her direwolf and her parents and her siblings and her way.

For the past few years she has felt so unlike the Sansa Stark of Winterfell. Felt so far removed from the girl she once was. She has been poked and prodded and pulled in so many directions. Black hair, lion sigils and amethyst necklaces swirl and cloud her head. Dead princes and dead husbands and dead friends litter at her feet.

She wonders if a heart could still beat if it felt like stone in your chest.

Sansa then wonders if being dead would be such a bad thing. Suppose the Night King won, what use would there be of going back? Winterfell was surely in ruins. Her people dead or scattered. The direwolf sigil was probably no more.

If Sansa died now, she would be at peace. She wants to stay in this position forever. She has always felt so safe in her lady mother’s arms. Felt loved and protected and happy.

If Sansa died she would surely be with father, mother, Robb, Rickon and Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrick and Rory and Lady. People that she loved, people that she missed so much she was afraid her chest would cave in with the want of them sometimes.

Sansa holds onto her mother tighter. She decides that she wants to see all of them very much.

So she is about to close her eyes and fall asleep to the hum of her mother’s voice when suddenly she remembers something.

“Jon.”

The humming ceases.

Sansa struggles to an upright position. Her mother doesn’t stop her.

“I… need to get back to Jon.” Her thoughts are cloudy in her mind, but she remembers dark sad eyes.

A sigh.

“And why would you do that my love?”

Sansa doesn’t hesitate as she replies with words she has never said out loud.

“Because I love him.”

Catelyn looks contemplative.

“I loved your father. I loved him even when he brought another woman’s child into our home. How angry I was, for all those years. And for what?”

She rubs at Sansa’s wet cheeks with the sleeve of her dress.

“You hated Jon,” Sansa remembers.

“I hated him for what I did not know when I lived,” she replies.

Catelyn cups Sansa’s face in her hands. Her hands were cold.

“Your father was a good man and he did what was right, but he underestimated how much I would have understood. He should have trusted me as a man should trust his wife.”

Sansa takes her mother’s hand and kisses her slender fingers.

“Trust you with what?” she asks.

They both look up as a raven flies in through the window, perching itself on the ledge.

They are both quiet as it begins to caw at them.

“You must go now, my love,” Catelyn says.

Sansa panics as her mother begins to pull away. She tries to grab for Lady’s fur but the direwolf has moved, out of her reach.

“No please, just a while longer,” she says.

“You do not belong here sweet child,” her mother tells her.

“Yes, I do. I belong here with you.” It’s desperate, scared.

“You belong in Winterfell,” Catelyn says as she runs her fingers through Sansa’s red hair, so much like her own.

“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.”

Catelyn kisses her daughter’s temple and pushes her out of her arms.

 

* * *

 

Sansa gasps awake mid-cry.

“Sansa!”

She shoots up into a sitting position, gasping and heaving for air. For a moment she is so shocked she doesn’t register the pain around her stomach. She looks down to see her fresh gown was beginning to stain red from her movement.

“Careful, you’re hurt,” a voice says.

She turns to see Jon sitting next to her bed and her heart leaps to her throat. She would have thrown herself at him if not for the pain that restricted her movement.

“Jon!” Tears spring in the corner of her eyes.

He was alive. He was alive and here and with her!

Jon smiles at her tiredly. He looked awful and like he should be resting himself but instead he takes her hand in his.

“How – what happened? They were here… how did you get to Winterfell?” she asks, a thousand questions running through her mind. She remembers his letter, the warning.

“Tormund saved me,” Jon explains.

“He distracted the Night King enough for the final blow but…”

Jon looked away with pain in his aged eyes.

Sansa gives Jon a sympathetic squeeze of his hand. Then the panic beings to rise again.

“Where is Bran and Arya? Brienne? Oh gods, Jaime!” It all comes back to her in waves.

Blue eyes and piercing screeches and all that _fire_.

“Calm down Sansa,” Jon says.

“Arya is alright. Hurt but alright. Brienne is here too, and she is with Jaime.” Sansa takes this all in, relief and worry and pain swirling in her chest.

“What of Bran?” She is almost afraid of the answer. It reminds her all those years ago when she had found out he had fallen from the tower.

Sansa closes her eyes and remembers her brother and the writhing dragon below them.

“He’s resting… but we don’t know what will happen. He’s not responding to us. Sam is doing everything he can,” Jon says, emotion clouding his voice.

Sansa’s tears fall then.

Bran was unconscious, but alive. He has to live, he has to come through. After all, Sansa knows Bran has done it before.

“Oh, gods I’m so happy you are alright Jon.”               

“I could say the same for you. You were shot with an arrow just as I found you.”

Sansa remembers the sound of string pulling behind her, and her red dress.

Her hand goes to her stomach and feels the throbbing pain beneath her fingers.

“What of the ice dragon then? Daenerys?”

“Dead. Bran… warged into it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. With dragon glass spears and when Drogon came, it was enough to defeat it,” Jon says.

“Daenerys is injured, but Sam tells me she will recover. I suspect she will rest in Winterfell for the time being before heading South to claim the Iron throne from Cersei.”

Sansa sits back, unbelieving at the turn of events.

“We have really won the War for the Dawn,” she marvels. It’s all too much to take in. Suddenly she is tired, and all she wants to do is sleep.

Jon sees this and smiles, moving to stand. He does his best to hide it, but Sansa sees the pained look as he struggles to get up.

Sansa knows Jon was more injured than he let on, and she loves him for trying to protect her from worrying.

 _I love him._ She had said those words to her lady mother and Sansa doesn’t think she has said words more true in her life.

When Jon turns to leave Sansa catches his hand again.

“Before I woke, I saw my mother.” Jon gives her a curious glance.

She smiles softly. “I told her I loved you.”

Jon stays still for a moment, surprise on his face.

But Sansa doesn’t mind, she had told him because she had wanted him to know, not that he would say it back. It didn’t matter, because she knew how he felt anyway.

As her consciousness slips from her, she registers Jon coming forward and placing a kiss on her temple, and then after, a soft one on her lips.

“When the Night King was coming for me, I closed my eyes and saw father. I told him I loved you too.”

When Sansa falls asleep, it’s with her heart feeling fuller than it has in years.

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, they discover Jon’s parentage under the white branches of the Weirwood tree.

Bran, now weak but awake and Samwell Tarly speak in a mixture of hushed and hurried tones to their small council.

Snow is falling, as light as a lover’s kiss.

When they finish there is a stunned silence. No one knows what to say more than Jon. He looks between Sam and Bran as if to hear the jest that would follow.

But when none comes his face turns darker by the moment. Sansa thinks this is how a man would look if he was choking on air.

Daenerys is mystified. She is no longer the last dragon. Arya is furious.

“Jon is my brother! Nothing will change that.”

She storms off, angry and hurt and confused.

Sansa stays rooted to the spot. She looks to Jon, who seems as if he was struggling to comprehend their words.

When Sam hands over the journal of High Septon Maynard Jon takes it with shaking hands.

“I’ll let you read over his words about Rhaegar and Lyanna,” he says with sympathy in his voice.

_Rhaegar Targaryen the last dragon and my aunt Lyanna Stark._

Sansa feels numb. Then another thought dawns on her.

_Jon is a Targaryen. Jon is not my father’s son. Jon is not my half-brother._

Sansa thinks back to her father and suddenly all his strange actions when it came to Jon all those years made sense. He had never dishonoured her mother as many found difficult to believe, Sansa included but Jon had been evidence of it, or so it had seemed. Father had been hiding Jon to keep him safe from Robert Baratheon and had sacrificed so much to keep him safe.

Sansa loved her father but learning this made her respect and admiration for him grow tenfold.

She remembers what her mother had said to her in the dream, that she hated Jon for what she did not know when she had lived.

Sansa understands now.

But while she understands, she knows Jon is struggling to. His whole life, his identity has been taken away from him in ancient brush strokes and visions from the Weirwood tree.

When she reaches for him, he turns away.

No one speaks when Jon leaves the Godswood, his shoulders squared and eyes red.

And Sansa wants to follow him, gods she wants to take away his pain, take it, seize it, _kill it_. But she knows he needs to digest this information alone.

Her heart goes out to him, and she just hopes he remembers the words she had said when she had woken up.

_I love you Jon, don’t forget that._

 

* * *

  

She finds him in the crypts.

At the end of the dark hall there is a small glow, and at the end of that, Jon.

He’s looking up at father’s statue. Well, now it was just _her_ father’s statue it seemed. Sansa felt awful for him.

He doesn’t turn to face her as she approaches.

“ _‘You may not have my name, but you have my blood,’_ that is what he had last said to me. I should have known,” Jon says with a rough voice. She can hear the tremor in his tone and she closes her eyes at the pain in it.

“Oh Jon, I am so sorry.”

He sighs heavily, running his hand over a stone Ice in father’s hands.

“All my life I wondered who my mother was. She was the reason people treated me differently. She was the reason I was never truly a Stark. I wondered. I wondered who she was, did she know about me, did she care?”

He turns to Lyanna Stark’s statue, a woman frozen in time.

“I’ve found her, and now I’ve lost her again.”

Sansa’s heart breaks for him, for the mother and father Jon never knew.

“You still have our family. You still have your friends,” Sansa says.

_You still have me._

“Yes well, will I still have the North’s support? Will I still have a home?”

“Winterfell will always be your home Jon.” Sansa says it with as much conviction as she could. She needs to make him believe it, she needs to make him believe it because it was true.

Jon turns away from her.

“Daenerys wants me to leave with her. To go South.  She says we are the last of the Targaryen dynasty. We are the last dragons.”

Sansa is so surprised she can’t form the right words.

A dragon, it didn’t fit Jon.

“You are the White Wolf. You are a Northerner,” Sansa says.

Jon gives a rueful smile.

“I am a Targaryen.”

“You are also a Stark,” she points out. “Lyanna was father’s sister.” _Just_ _my father now._

“The North will never accept me as a leader again,” Jon says. “What will I be if not that?”

Sansa swallows thickly before replying.

She says the words she had thought about so long ago now it seemed.

“They will, if you marry me.”

It’s deathly quiet in the crypts in the moments after it leaves her mouth.

Jon looks at her in disbelief.

Sansa continues to speak with all the courage she has left. With this, Jon does not have to go to Kings Landing with Daenerys. With this, Jon cannot be turned away by the Northern Lords. With this, Jon does not have to leave her.

“I’ve said it before. I have the Stark name. If you marry me the North will have to accept you and you won’t have to leave with Daenerys.”

Jon runs a hand over his tired face.

“Sansa, this is madness.”

“ _Why_?”

He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out.

“I won’t make you marry someone like me,” he eventually says.

The brokenness of his words hit Sansa’s chest like a mallet.

“Someone like you? Someone who is kind and brave and honourable? Someone I know who will never hurt me?”

“We are not siblings Jon. Cousins marry. Our grandmother and grandfather were cousins. I was once betrothed to Robin Arryn.”

She takes his cold hands in hers.

“It will all be fine, I promise. Nothing about you has changed, you are still Jon and I am still Sansa.”

Jon smiles weakly at her and she can see that he knows she is right. She can see he is tired of fighting, and now he no longer has to.

He has her, he has her now and always.

Jon steps forward and takes her face into his hands and presses their foreheads together. Just by a touch Sansa feels him, feels his grief and sadness and confusion pouring out of his skin like an overflowing dam. But she also feels something else. His love, his relief to know they are not siblings. The desperateness to which he holds her.

She lifts her chin up and now it was her turn to kiss his temple, as he had done to her so many times before.

_I will take care of you._

They stay in that position for longer than Sansa remembers. They stay holding each other until their vision blurs and their limbs start to ache.

Finally, it’s Jon who pulls away. He wipes at his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. 

“So, are you asking for my hand in marriage then, Lady Stark?” he half laughs and half cries.

“I suppose I am, my lord.” Sansa manages back through her blurry eyes.

Jon holds her again, and when he closes his eyes, she can feel the flutter of his dark lashes across her cheeks.

“Yes,” he breathes out, one syllable.

Their lips meet quietly, surely.

And they kiss until the last flame of the torch dies out, and the room fades to dark.

 

* * *

 

They marry when the snow begins to melt.

It had been difficult, telling the truth to the other Houses. But with the High Septon’s journal and Bran describing things no one alive should know, it was hard to dispute. Daenerys accepted when it became apparent Jon would not contest her right to the iron throne and understood the advantage of having someone she knows will not rally against her in the North.

Afterwards it was settled, and arrangements were made to the sound of Sansa’s hammering heart. Today was the day.

Jon waits for her by Sam, who they have picked to join them.

Sansa is trembling as she waits to walk down to them. Arya is beside her, her arm looped through hers.

“It’s okay,” Arya whispers.

Sansa glances down at her sister and gives her a brief smile. She thinks of everyone Arya has taken everything the hardest. Arya had thought Jon was her brother and had never seen him and Sansa as close.

When they had told her Arya looked at them as if they were both mad. She had refused to believe it; had said every horrible thing she could have thought of. But when she had seen how they acted around one another, Arya understood. It was difficult for her, but she had understood.

So it surprised and delighted Sansa when Arya offered to walk her to Jon. It delighted her more when Arya had agreed to wear a dress, but just this once.

They made their way through a lit up Godswood from the stars above, and Sansa takes a moment to look at the odd little family they have created.

Ser Davos stands near Jon, looking all like a proud father.

Brienne and Jaime sit on the right, grinning from ear to ear. It had taken Jaime time to recover, but when he looks at Brienne Sansa thinks that even after Cersei, he knows that there is more to live for. Bran watches from the side-lines, a hint of a smile on his tired face.  

Daenerys and her party are seated on the left, the blonde giving Sansa a genuine but sad smile. Tyrion gives Sansa a nod, for old times’ sake.

And Sansa had always thought that she would only get married in the South. Would become a Southern lady and live in the Red Keep. Had always thought she would marry a blonde prince instead of a dark haired one.

But when she and Arya descend down the walkway, and she’s surrounded by the Old Gods and snow and the North _,_ Sansa thinks there is no other place she should be.

She takes a moment to look over at Jon, and the breath is caught in her throat at the sight of him. Sansa is struck by how handsome he really was. Even without Longclaw Jon stands tall and firm, and Sansa had always believed father when he had told her she would marry someone kind and gentle and strong. While it had come in the most unlikely of places, but Sansa wouldn’t trade it for anything.

When they join hands and say the words _father, smith, warrior, mother, maiden, crone, stranger, I am his and he is mine,_ Sansa has never said words that have wrapped so comfortably on her tongue.

Jon smiles shyly across from her all the way and Sansa loves him.

She loves him for who he was, and who he is now. They both have seen so many horrors, shared so many scars inside and out.

They had started against the world and the word against them. Had struggled and fought and survived. Many have been lost along the way, but many have also been found. She looks at Brienne and Jaime and Ser Davos and Sam’s kind faces.

Sansa has been to the seven hells and back, and now they were _home_.

She tries to smile at the irony of it all. Of all them she and Jon had been the two most eager to leave.

Her heart had been set on King’s Landing. Jon had left for the Wall.

And now all these years later here they were back again, back where they truly belonged, with each other, in the North.

And Sansa doesn’t know what will happen in the future. The War for the Dawn was over, but the War for Westeros was not. But Sansa doesn’t care about that. She has Winterfell and she has her family.

Cersei, Daenerys, Tyrion, Varys, Euron Greyjoy. They can have the city that killed her father. They can have the lands that claimed her lady mother and her brothers and her uncles and aunties. Sansa is fine here, where she was born and where she will pass.

And when she and Jon kiss Sansa feels him, feels the taste of forever burning on his tongue.

Above them, the trees whisper and sing with laughter.

A Stark and Targaryen had started the war, and now underneath the Old Gods and the red leaves of the Weirwood tree, a Stark and a Targaryen has ended it. 

Sansa closes her eyes and thinks with finality,

_I am his, and he is mine._

Nearby in the glass garden of Winterfell, a small flower blooms from the melting snow on the ground.

From the frost coloured rose, a sweet scent seeps into the air, filling it with sweetness.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fin.


End file.
